Brace Yourself (Brace Yourself For The Grand Finale)
by Rogha
Summary: Pacific Rim Au. Waltemis. Win or lose this war, they're doing it in style. And what's more stylish than a fighting an alien beastie in a two-hundred-and-sixty foot tall robotic suit with your best friend? (Most things, probably.)
1. Then

**Uhm. I've been working on this for a little while. Not the most original, but hey, I'mma roll with anyway and see where it goes.**

 **(Because I have very little of anything really that I'm sure of. I have spiderplan. It'll do whatever a spiderplan can.)**

 **I own the neither characters, nor the universe of this fic, I'm simply borrowing them in order to wreak a little havoc.**

 **Title taken from the song Finale, by Madeon.**

* * *

 **Then**

* * *

Jade and Artemis donated blood regularly for two reasons. It was the right thing to do, and there was usually free food. When the Jaeger Programme called for candidates, they figured that the same rationale could be applied. (They also suspected at least a few Richie Rich deck shoe wearing assholes to be there, ripe for the swiping of wallets, but that was beside the point.)

If by some manner of miracle they were both daring to hope for (not that they would let each other know that) they passed the multitude of tests the flyers had promised they might get to pilot one of those giant robotic Iron-Man-Wishes-He-Was-That-Cool suits. If that happened, they'd get food and a bed(each! A bed each!) and the constant threat of death. (Eh, that last one wasn't anything they would describe as novel, but a bed and regular food? That was something to sing home about, if they weren't two homeless kids. Artemis could write to Mom about it, at any rate.)

The form to apply was strange, but Artemis figured it to make some kind of sense to someone looking for something that meant strapping you into an Autobot wouldn't end in complete disaster. Names, birthdays, (she was barely fifteen, and Jade a few months shy of eighteen, so that had been a blatant, outrageous lie) qualifications (would being a middle school dropout be a barrier to their application?) had all seemed like reasonable question, but then it had gotten oddly specific. Whatever they were looking for, they knew exactly what it was, but hadn't told anyone else.

 _15\. How many languages do you speak?_

Five. English, Spanish, Vietnamese, German and French. (being multilingual was a big indicator of Jaeger aptitude, Artemis would later learn.)

 _33\. Do you play any instruments?_

Yes, the violin. The piano. (Not that either of them had much opportunity to practise any more, but they tried their best to keep up with it.)

 _61\. Have you had any training in hand to hand combat?_

Yes. (There was a call to elaborate, but they left that space conspicuously blank, smudged with the ghost of a pencil erased with extreme prejudice.)

 _95\. Have you ever played any team sports?_

Yes (softball, Artemis was the catcher while Jade pitched. They'd won a few medals, which they managed to hold onto, somehow.)

 _98\. Can you drive?_

(Neither of them had licenses, but they both dare to hazard a yes. They hadn't been asked for licences, after all) Yes.

The form was hundreds (okay, one hundred and twenty-nine) questions long. It had space for up to three pilot applicants, and it needed a photo of each of them. Artemis had a thick wodge of photos she'd taken when they were younger and thought they were happy, but that had been nearly five years ago, and she wasn't exactly going to call them up to date.

So they splashed out, jumping in and out of a photo booth quickly. And they posted it, in one of Artemis's precious envelopes, citing the elderly woman who gave them lunch on Sundays and a place to receive letters in exchange for gardening work. Jade liked working there, liked coaxing the plants from the earth, but she'd never actually tell Artemis as much. Not out loud where she could hear her.

Test after test, interview after interview of completely irrelevant questions (according to Jade, Artemis was sure they made sense to someone somewhere). They tried their best to look clean at each meet up, and at each event there were less and less people to stare at their tangled manes of hair and mostly clean clothes. Probably thinking that they weren't fooling anyone, that Artemis and Jade didn't even want to be there. (They did. They really did, anyone who couldn't see it wasn't looking hard enough to see the glint in their eyes, or was unwilling to meet their sharp steel-piercing gaze.)

The tough, brawny men, sets of brothers and police partners and one gay couple who pulled them aside to tell them gently that this was really dangerous work and ask them did they know what they were doing? All looked at them like they were little kids, a look that said they couldn't believe someone had let these two scrawny brats in.

(They both had fake IDs, one to push Artemis over eighteen and another to put Jade at a respectable twenty. The guy who'd made them had been a little stunned. Not even old enough to drink? They'd forked over twenty wrinkled dollars each and he'd handed back it back when they agreed that one of them would go to prom with him the following week, but he'd need to get a dress. Artemis had gone in an ugly bridesmaids' dress that belonged to his sister. She'd lost the game of rock paper scissors on purpose, or maybe Jade had beaten her fair and square.)

There'd been married couples and childhood best friends, whittled away two by two like the animals in the Ark, each assured that just because they weren't Drift Compatible, it didn't mean that they weren't close. Eventually there were only six sets of applicants left.

"We could take them," Jade said, over confidant and spoiling for a fight.

"I don't know," Artemis replied, eyeing the Navy Seals. "I'd feel pretty bad about beating these guys up."

They'd all done the fitness, the running, the sparring, the dancing, the leading each other through a room of obstacles blindfolded, puzzle solving, Mario Kart playing and there was one final interview before entering Jaeger Academy. (They called it an Academy, but it was an indeterminate time period spent learning how to pilot a Jaeger and beat the shit out of every Kaiju the Breach could produce and hanging out in a simulator while they built a Jaeger. They were getting faster at it, or maybe it just took a while to figure out how to build a robot.)

Jade and Artemis were the fourth pair out of the remaining candidates. They pulled their hair back into tight ponytails and dressed in a way that made them look a little more like a matched set (it was a twin audition technique) and look neat and respectable, kind of.

The man who'd brought them up in the elevator looked at them like he couldn't believe they thought they were fooling anyone. It would take more than neatly belted tunics and black leggings to fool him, certainly. He had the voice of a snobby butler and looked like he might have been called Alfred or something suitably Britishy sounding like that. (He was called Alfred, as it turned out and he was an excellent baker and repairer of torn clothes.)

It was the first door on the right, that's what he'd told them (Artemis had a good memory, especially for shit like that) just before he practically shoved them out the elevator and hurriedly pressed the 'Close Doors' button. (Jade insisted she knew something was off when recounting it later, Artemis was just used to being disliked by strangers who didn't want to give her and her sister a chance.) The doors dinged much faster than they normally did, and it was pandemonium.

People swarmed in, dressed as those pro-Kaiju religious nutjobs they'd been seeing on the news for months, yelling and moving in for the kill. They were unprofessional and untrained, but try fighting a zealot and you'll find that whatever god he believes in has granted him some kind of super strength. But Artemis and Jade fight this fight like they have fought a thousand others- viciously, victoriously, and without much mercy. (Murder, even if it was of weird cultist goons, would probably have reflected badly on them. Maybe put them out of the running. So they held back, just enough. That didn't mean no one went home without broken bones.)

It was going swimmingly. They were holding their own, gaining ground, Jade hadn't pushed anyone out any 20th story windows and nobody had an injury they wouldn't recover from in four-to-six weeks. It was, as previously mentioned, going swimmingly. Until Artemis almost knocked out Bruce Wayne; founder and leading private contributor (Artemis later learned that this was to be read as 'leading contributor') to the Jaeger Program with a fire extinguisher when he came to congratulate them.

Luckily, he ducked.

Of course, the first thing Bruce did after he congratulated them and assured them of their place on the Jaeger Program (in the Academy, with the food and the beds and the constant life threatening danger and the slightly greater chance to pilot one of those gigantic robots) was to order the pair of them to 'fess up about their real identities.

Artemis cheekily (and hopefully, so, so hopefully) replied that they were Jaeger Pilots. Bruce cracked a small grin before telling them that there was no way she had the vote so how old where they really.

Jade tells the billionaire in no uncertain terms that even though she's only eighteen and Artemis is only fifteen that if Jade says it's okay for Artemis to be strapped into a giant robot beside her sister, then it was okay to strap Artemis into a giant robot beside her sister. (And Jade did say it's okay, so it is. Because Jade's been Artemis's self-appointed legal guardian for at least two years.)

Bruce nodded, and Artemis and Jade are enrolled in the Academy for an indefinite length of time until they graduate by getting thrown into a giant Jaeger to beat up equally giant nightmare Godzilla monsters.

It turned out that the Academy only existed for as long as it took them to frantically build the Mark II Jaegers. Older, experienced Mark I pilots trained them while they waited. (Not that anyone was too experienced in the field of beating the shit out of the probable harbingers of the Apocalypse.)

Jade and Artemis were top of their Academy class (not that there was an official grading system, but they can beat everyone else into the rubber sparring matt, so that's what they measured by), and they spent their free time getting their high school diplomas (let's just say that neither of them were valedictorian and leave the GEDs at that) and badgering construction workers that probably had better things to do than humour teenage girls but humour them none the less.

Each set of potential pilots still viewed the others as competition, aware that they still might not get the chance to pilot a Jaeger, and they all avoided being chummy. Artemis wondered if it's not just them the other teams are avoiding, bitter over their 'natural' talent when it comes to beating people into a bloody pulp, embarrassed by their youthfulness or just unable to connect with them because they were all goody goody two shoes and her and Jade were the baddest of baddie baddie one boots in comparison.

Jade and Artemis were smart, even if they'd never been given the opportunity to really figure it out before and with the GEDs quickly out of the way they moved on to learning anything anyone in the Shatterdome was willing to teach them while the other trainee pilots sparred more or booked extra slots on the simulator.

The instructors had stated again and again that the neural handshake and the Drift were the most important parts of operating the Jaeger, but the canned memories the simulator provides are too sugary sweet and soft for Artemis and Jade to ever get fooled into thinking those memories were their memories. (The scientists behind it all were working on a new simulator, one that can create a real neural handshake but it won't be ready for another long-time yet. They all have more pressing matters to attend to, and a simulator to train pilots cannot be made top priority. It falls off of the long finger eventually, but no one ever managed find time to complain.)

Artemis became very fond of a lithe flexible Jaeger- _Eden Tempest_ (that was an oxymoron, but Artemis liked it anyway, and that sort of thing had to happen sooner or later when you used a generator to create names for giant robots) - mostly because it had the most patient crew, the ones who taught her how to use the TIG and MIG welders and the angle grinder and all the tools it was definitely irresponsible to let a fifteen year old use on the giant Hail Mary Pass. They confided in her that, even though they have absolutely no say in whose Jaeger _Tempest_ will be, that they hoped it would be her and Jade's. (Artemis hoped so too, but Jade knew better than to hope for anything, so she just milked the bed and the food and the showers that are hot for five whole minutes- four-and-three-quarter minutes longer than they were used to.)

The pair of them hung out with the Research and Development Department a lot, because those guys argued over their science homework in way that were both amusing and not nearly as helpful as Artemis was hoping. They also explain everything they know about the Kaiju (which is admittedly not a whole lot yet, but there's something new to learn every day) and they showed them the fun science experiments and how to blow stuff up. (How to blow a lot of stuff up. Artemis was grateful she didn't die in an explosion before she could die fighting a Kaiju.)

One of the scientists, Barry told them about his girlfriend Iris, and her nephew, who's about her age so much that Artemis told him in no uncertain terms to just fucking marry her already if he loves her so much. Barry laughed nervously and showed her the engagement ring he'd been carting around for months. (Artemis thought it was cute. Jade thought it was a good way to lose something, so Artemis was pretty sure that was what made him ask in the end. Wallets had a tendency to end up mysteriously thinner when they were around.)

Iris agreed to marry him, probably against her better judgment, and an invitation turned up for Jade and Artemis. They didn't end up going, and Barry never asked why.

There was a set of maintenance workers who taught them how to play (and how to cheat) at every card game under the sun, and how to clean just about anything that might need cleaning. (Jade and Artemis become far and above the most useful of all the recruits before they ever pilot a Jaeger.) There were a couple of caterers who teach them how not to poison themselves and how to make a dozen kinds of bread from scratch. Jade was better at it then Artemis. (Of course she was. Jade was better than Artemis at almost everything, unfortunately.)

There was the kindly, quiet man, stooped and elderly, with eyes that told a story Artemis couldn't read (no one told them what he did, no one was able to, it seemed) who let them into the Armoury (where they weren't supposed to be) and the firing range (they weren't allowed in there either) in the small hours to practice a set of skills no one in the Shatterdome needed to teach them.

But everyone was surprised at what they do know, as it turned out. Artemis couldn't do laundry, but she could fire anything with deadly accuracy (anything from a gun to a dart, a bow and arrow to a basketball. She wasn't allowed in the local snooker club anymore either, something about hustling). Jade couldn't do long division but when Barry was annoying her one day with a patronising explanation of Kaiju in the lab, and Jade synthesised a toxin in less than three minutes and threatened his life. (Artemis assured him that it means she liked him, she wouldn't waste the time it took to synthesise it otherwise. She'd just have stabbed him and been done with it otherwise. He didn't look overly reassured.)

The other cadets pretended to ignore them, ignore the pair of sisters who scrambled to learn everything they could, climbing that which should not be climbed and pestering everyone who might have had so much as a sliver of wisdom to impart. The Shatterdome is a fountain of knowledge and they drank deep, attempting to quench a thirst they didn't even know that they had.

The other cadets talked though, almost never shut up, about those strange sisters, almost feral in their fighting style like every spar is life and death and something even bigger. (Because it is, to them. This was a way out and a way in at the same time) Those sisters who only pulled back at the kill shots, when the instructors called to stop them and they snap out of whatever they had snapped into, spines ruler straight suddenly and heels clicked together. Those girls were insane and over eager and surely, surely no one would ever even consider let them in a giant robot that could level a city. Several cities.

They were wrong.

Artemis was allowed to pilot a Jaeger before she was allowed to drive. (She never got a license in the end. Neither did Jade. They became too important to be trusted with their own motoring skills overnight.)

When Jade and Artemis were strapped into a Jaeger, (their Jaeger, it's _Eden Tempest_ and she is their Jaeger. Theirs, theirs, theirs.) to fight the Kaiju known as Snapjaw, the other cadets thought it was a waste. (Waste of a Jaeger, waste of whatever lives these girls could've hoped to have had.) They kept saying it was a waste, kept thinking it was a waste for the entire eight minutes it took them to rip the bastard limb from limb.

(There was stunned silence, then reluctant cheering, then contemplation of whether all those appendages even were limbs.)

* * *

They became Rock Stars, heroes, prodigies. They got to be on _The_ _Ellen DeGeneres Show_ and there's a book deal; a (mostly true) autobiography about two underdog extraordinaires. Artemis remembered the ghost-writer fondly later. (She'd been really good at dealing with very sullen teenagers who liked to antagonise people who pried in their private lives and histories.)

Artemis saved everything in a box under her bunk (under Jade's really, she refused to sleep in the top bunk point blank. Artemis thought this might be because she knew Artemis wanted the top bunk, but Jade would never give Artemis something just because she wanted it); dozens of newspaper clippings, discs of interviews, a copy of the book that her name on the cover- over Jade's- (it's supposed to be very good, but Artemis had never read it. Apparently they cut the only part she actually wrote from the acknowledgments, when she'd thanked the ghost-writer. There were a lot of photos she'd taken in it, though.). Even the action figures were there, her, Jade and _Eden_ _Tempest_ (they really weren't to scale, the three of them were all the same size. Artemis was miffed that they didn't acknowledge the inch and a half she was able to lord over Jade.) Her GED diploma was there, and so was Jade's, every medal, she had so many now, one that had been pinned to her breast by the President nestled with her softball one. (She preferred the softball one, mostly because it still had a smear of blood from when she used it as a nunchuck.)

All of it was tucked into a shoebox- the first pair of new shoes she'd ever owned- along with thick stacks of photographs, product of more than a few crappy disposable cameras.

Her team made fun of her- she could definitely afford a digital camera. She knew she would never remember to actually go and print the photographs, so she kept buying crappy plastic disposable cameras. Barry told her it didn't make sense, fiscally, but she could never find it in her to care too much about fiscal sense because a) no matter how much ground they are graining, it was probably still the end of the world so what was she supposed to be saving for anyway and b) she was fucking loaded. (Artemis couldn't believe it, but she also didn't know what to do with that much money.)

(She bought a violin, but no one was supposed to know that.)

(Everyone does.)

(Jade was shrewder than that, she rang up a piano company and asked for one. And they just gave it to her, free. Jade managed to get a lot of free things. Artemis knew she could too, but it felt immoral somehow. Jade was above morals.)

The shoebox was getting pretty full, by anyone's standards, and very heavy. She'd need to buy a new pair of shoes to have enough box to hold all the memories she'd made. There was some older mementos, things that corresponded in the section of her and Jade's autobiography entitled 'Origin Story'. (There were three sections; 'Origin Story', 'Ready Or Not, Here We Come' and 'How To Stare Death In The Face')

She'd never had so much she wanted to remember before.

Besides, seeing as she only had her battered Army issue combat boots, and the brown leather zip up boots that lived in the shoebox before her memories did, were starting to let in a little more water than Artemis would've liked, maybe it was time for a new pair of shoes.

She could afford them after all, what with her being loaded now and everything. They got paid well enough, but it was the royalties from the autobiography (a New York Times bestseller) and the merchandise (there was so much stuff for sale with her face on it, authorized and unauthorised) that really brought the cash into her and Jade's accounts. (Some of the money from the merchandise went into the Jaeger Programme, but Jade and Artemis are best-selling items. There was all kinds of gross porn about them on the internet. Everything from male fans filling a perceived void to tentacle porn to incest porn. That was a subject something Artemis hoped would never ever come up in an interview ever again. There were some things you couldn't unsee.)

She was thinking about shoes and where to get them when the klaxon went off. The klaxon was the loudest sound Artemis could imagine, accompanied by a flashing red light that made it feel like everything was falling apart. It was loud enough to rouse the dead, but Jade still had to be all but tipped out of bed. This was Kaiju number nine for them, and they had a record to break.

"Get up!" Artemis tugged on the blanket.

"No," Jade burrowed further into her bunk. "Fuck off."

Jade didn't care that they were going to break the record with this one, she'd rather roll over in bed, swearing sleepily in Vietnamese, and let another team from their 'graduating class' handle it. Artemis was buzzing though; this'd be nine drops, nine kills and she was only seventeen.

(It was a beautiful day.)

Some teams fixed up their armour after every drop, but Artemis and Jade both like the distressed look. It suited their public image to be battle scarred and hardened by life's troubles. The armour that they are strapped into (it was impossible to put that suit on, especially the spine, by yourself) was very familiar now (as much from public appearances in it as actual Kaiju attacks, if not more so) but neither would have described it as a second skin, it was heavy and cumbersome and the plates pinched your skin occasionally. Jade was jacked up on caffeine from a mystery cocktail (it was a combination of Red Bull, Diet Coke, Caffeine Pills and Turkish Coffee Sludge) that her boytoy Roy brought her. (Artemis pretended not to know about the whole boytoy thing.)

(Jade knew she knew though, as much as she pretended to believe Artemis's feigned ignorance. There weren't any secrets anymore. Not that there ever really were secrets, just things let unsaid as they were deemed unimportant. The only thing Jade had brought up that she'd found out from the Drift was Cameron. Jade had ignored whatever 'friends-with-benefits' thing that Artemis and Cameron had had going until it was time to sit her down and tell Artemis that that boy was getting too attached so she needed to either cut and run or grow a pair and develop some feelings for the poor schmuck.)

(The cut and run had only halfway worked. The run was the tricky part, reduced to a pitiful avoid-eye-contact at all costs. They'd been getting better though- when eye contact is made, they make serious nods of acknowledgment as opposed to looking away frantically. Artemis had faith that they would be able to recapture the magic of friendship one day.)

Artemis was excited enough that she was forced to repress the urge to babble, which, seeing as she wasn't a talkative type, wasn't really all that hard in the first place. Jade's caffeine cocktail had only levelled her up from tired to 'murderous yet alert' and even Roy the Boytoy was dancing along the periphery. Helping the techies in any way he can. (Mostly by caffeinating them.)

The Jaeger Programme, the drop days especially, were halfway between complete chaos and a well-oiled machine. (Roy was a pilot after all, together with some rich asshole named Oliver Queen whose bow and arrows Artemis liberated for her late night target practices because she still wasn't allowing in the target range.) Today, Roy was scrambling to help the techies set up, placating Jade and fetching coffee for anyone who looked like they could use it and then some that didn't. There were no idle hands on a drop day, even if Roy'd have to rush to his station to get fitted after this in case he was needed as back up. (He was a pilot, and even though _Black Canary_ wasn't on call, but he'd go be ready just in case, because not being on called was no guarantee for not being needed.)

(He'd never let them live it down if he was needed, even if he was needed because they had died.)

There were no idle hands on a drop day. They might be beating the Kaiju back for the minute, but the Breach in the middle of the ocean is spitting out bigger and nastier beasties faster than they can build Jaegers to take them on. It was days like this that it was hard to forget that they were only delaying something inevitable, but that line of thinking wasn't helpful to anyone on drop days, so they mostly lived in a state of denial.

Someone asked Artemis a question. She made a vague non-committal noise before waving them away. She couldn't think straight, she really wanted that record. She shouldn't've been excited about the beastie that was coming through the Breach, but she couldn't help it. She and Jade were good at what they did, the best that there was.

The more Kaiju they beat the harder it was, but it wasn't impossible yet.

There weren't exactly any retired Jaeger Pilots, except Bruce Wayne, kind of.

He was mostly just promoted because his partner was dead (died in a car crash, how ordinary a way to go; the reason that Jade and Artemis weren't allowed drive anywhere by themselves. Jaeger pilots were too valuable to risk anywhere other than a giant robot) and had left him some weird son who liked to climb the rafters in and hang out in all of Artemis and Jade's favourite haunts and hack the NSA.

His name was Dick Grayson and he changed the code for the Kaiju strength category assessment software without asking anyone.

(They were sort of friends, and Artemis didn't know who that was sadder for, but she couldn't help it.)

Jade and Artemis got into _Eden Tempest_ 's head, got as strapped in as anyone was in a Jaeger (not very, and too much at the same time) and wait. It never took long, but it always snuck up on you and felt like a blow to the head. The Drift. It felt raw and vulnerable every time, even though Jade already knew everything. You needed to let everything wash over you, even if it hurt. Catch one memory and before you knew it, you were chasing the RABIT down the deep hole of human psychology. A extremely dark one in their case.

Neither Jade nor Artemis had ever chased the RABIT, although they've made more than their fair share of Alice in Wonderland jokes about it. (A fragment of their childhood bedroom flickered past their eyes, one faded poster in particular flashed into view before being swallowed in a slew of fresher, crisper memories.)

It was much easier to let everything swirl past until they sync up than let themselves get caught up in remembering. Every shitty part of their life flashed before their eyes. (It was easy to pretend that it had been as easy to let it happen.) Something glowed an affirmative green on a screen somewhere, but they knew without checking, because suddenly they were one person that happened to be two hundred and sixty feet tall. Artemis's hands started shaking as caffeine rushed through Jade's blood.

Other pilots didn't describe the Drift and piloting the same way that they did. Dinah, the psychologist that made sure none of the pilots are going to turn around and destroy a civilian population (and therefore, arguably the most valuable personnel member to the Jaeger Programme), said it was because Jade and Artemis were so young and had very little life that didn't involve each other in some way. They have never spent more than a day apart, without counting the two and a half years of Jade's life Artemis spent not-being-born.

(They didn't.)

(Artemis liked Dinah, she was very down to earth for someone who believed in psychology.)

And then there was the drop, right on the Miracle Mile (a misleading term for the ten mile mark from the coastline) outside Alaska and there was a boat where there shouldn't be.

According to the peeling letters they had to squint to read, she was the _Angeline._

 _Angeline_ carried eight people on her, which was nothing compared to the population of Anchorage and the other cities within walking distance for a beastie that big, but Jade and Artemis were heroes now, and that mentality was infectious, especially when you were sharing a head space. (Jade would pretend that the hero complex was all Artemis, but Artemis knew there every thought overlapped in the Drift. They were one person here _, Eden Tempest_ , and they wanted to save everyone aboard the _Angeline._ )

As soon as heroics start setting in, they're hard to shake loose, even in people who were bitter and cynical. (Compared to Jade, Artemis was downright naïve.)

So, as it stood, Jade and Artemis would've been more than happy to trade each of their eight successful Kaiju kills for one of those lives. (Assuming of course that each of those kills went to one of the other sets of pilots, like the pilots of _Black Canary_ or _Martian Manhunter_ and the Kaiju hadn't killed the population of a major city.) But history didn't work like that, and neither did saving lives. They needed a different plan.

The record won't matter shit if they can't save the people on that boat, actual human lives that they could see and hold in their (enormous, robot) hands, lives that were placed inconveniently between them and the Kajiu. Saving lives, all of them, was the whole point of the Jaeger Programme after all. (A part of _Eden Tempest_ wondered if they'd have made the same choice a year ago.)

So, calmly and respectfully, they ignored Bruce Wayne and a thousand techies' angry orders and protests and made it their business to pick up those fishermen and get them out of harm's way.

Hammertail, the Kaiju, (who named these things? Probably Dick's refurbished category determining software) didn't like that one bit, lurching forward and roaring. The water rippled and waves broke, swelling out with the noise. Even inside the Jaeger head, their ears throbbed in protest. (Artemis took back what she said earlier about the klaxon.) There were the cries of the fishermen, no doubt writhing in pain and panic and fear, echoing faintly under that terrible sound. (The fishermen must have been loud, to be audible to them through it all.)

Hammertail swiped and _Eden Tempest_ dodged back, dancing on light boxer's feet. They kept it up, dodging and dancing and trying not to lose any ground over the Miracle Mile (so named, because if a Kaiju broke it, it'd take a miracle to take the beastie down). It served only to frustrate the beastie, who roared again, the sound ringing painfully in eardrums. (Drowned out Bruce Wayne's barking voice and angry orders, though, so they found time to be grateful for small mercies.)

This was turning out to be one of the most dangerous games of keep away that they'd ever played, and they couldn't afford to lose this one. (As it was, the fishermen had probably all suffered permanent hearing loss.)

Hammertail howled, rearing its ugly head before springing, eager to rip every part of them to shreds with claws and gut them with the tusks that protruded from a serious underbite. They ducked again, swinging in up against the beastie's jaw. He stumbled back, and his heavy tail started moving (Hammertail was dangerous from all angles), swaying back and forth as he watched them, meeting their eyes with his own surprisingly calculating ones.

They were at a stalemate, and everything was altogether too quiet, only the harsh gasps as Artemis and Jade sucked in lungfuls of air. The heavy sounds of the storm building outside are muted. (Even Bruce recognised that it was a time to shut the hell up because this guy ain't nothing like anyone's seen before.) They stay focused, trying to read his next move, running a comparison with what he's shown them already.

Hammertail may have been ugly, but that didn't mean for anything new in the world of the Kaiju. They weren't pretty, and they certainly weren't soft. They were mostly dumb as shit, but you didnn't need to be smart to destroy a city when you were that big. Hammertail looked to be smart though, and that spelled for a lot of things, all of them T-R-O-U-B-L-E.

His tail was moving faster now and his shoulders and hunching he was getting ready to spring and they turned to block-

The tail he was no doubt named for, heavy and spiked like a mace, swung around hard and fast from all that built up momentum, crushing into their free arm, rendering it near useless when it crumples like aluminium foil. The arm in question was on Artemis's side, so she bared the brunt of the pain, but even Jade had to grit her teeth against the scream that threatened to rip from her lungs, the scream that poured from Artemis, spilling all the air from her and leaving her gasping. Her arm still worked, but the giant robot one it was supposed to correspond to was suddenly dead weight, barely responding to her.

They had to put the boat down if they wanted to keep up this fight, and hope that the fishermen can get far enough away under their own steam to save themselves. They were relying a lot on the preservation instincts of the captain and crew of that boat, but they were only human. (Humanity was awfully stupid when it came to danger zones and get away opportunities sometimes.)

The skies tear open, rain thrumming against the outside of _Eden Tempest._

Hammertail broke through the Miracle Mile, pushing and gaining more ground than _Eden Tempest_ had ever given before, but they pushed back, holding him and grappling and they were gaining inches. (Inches aren't anything to a Jaeger, nothing to Kaiju.) It's not enough, they can't get him back over the Miracle Mile with inches.

The crippled arm was hanging uselessly. (Worse than uselessly, actually, each move sent a fresh bolt of pain up Artemis's arm. She could hear Jade wince when it did, so it wasn't just her.) They were barely managed to block, barely managed to hold Hammertail back (Artemis could hear the baited breathe of the Shatterdome in her ear, and the distant noise or hurried preparations to send back up over the blood pounding in her ears) but this Kaiju was smart enough (too smart, and that was their whole problem) to know that they were favouring one side and-

(It wasn't slow motion. It wasn't slow motion at all, it was fast and painful and-)

-it was a feint to the left to _Eden Tempest's_ vulnerable side and they moved and Hammerhead moved and they were open they had left a space wide open because they had gotten sloppy because they thought they were gods, unbeatable and infallible and they fall to earth hard and fast and painful when Hammerhead's claws (they were harder than any that have come before, and he was smarter) tore as though through paper, the metal shrieking and rending and the sound was nothing, nothing to Jade when she released a scream made of everything she had held in over the years and Artemis screamed like a whole becoming half and Jade's life, her life, their life flashed before her eyes but no matter what it was she wanted to cling to she couldn't chase the RABIT not now and not ever and Jade was torn from the cockpit, torn from the Drift and torn from Artemis.

Hammertail roared like he had won some great victory, beating his fists against his chest and the sound reverberates through what is left of _Eden Tempest_ and Artemis feels it throbbing in her ears but she couldn't hear anything over her own voice and the echo of the scream made up of everything Jade didn't want to be.

Artemis was screaming still, screaming with the pain of being torn apart and torn to shreds and a loss so acute she didn't understand it, would never understand it. The sound was lonely and broken, lost in the vastness of the pacific and rage building in her chest, filling the space that the scream is vacating, the hole torn by Jade's absence.

It would've broken her ribs, the pressure pushing there, if she didn't do something about it. Hammerhead was still out there (still taking the time to pat itself on the back) and so are eight fishermen and an entire planet of people (who aren't Jade) counting on her (her and Jade) and she was going to kill him.

Nine drops.

Nine kills.

Now or never.

She was on her own, and every muscle and nerve was screaming, echoing her grief and yelling, yelling that this was a terrible idea but it was the only idea she had and no one had ever prepared a backup plan for this scenario. No one is coming to rescue her, no one that would arrive in time to save her and eight fishermen anyway.

(Jade would never let her live it down if someone had to rescue her.)

Lightening crackled around her, the air in the cockpit flooded with ozone and the reclaimer struggled to keep up with it. Let it strike. Tempest could handle it. She was in her element.

(A storm, a life or death situation, dark desperate times called and demanding for ever more desperate measures.)

She stepped across moving into the space Jade wasn't, pulling out of straps that are there for her own safety and there weren't any straps for this, to hold her in place while she stood between two pilot rigs and hoped for a miracle.

She took the full neural load.

 _it's painful she's on fire every part of her was burning burning she was burning burning burning searing and blazing like a lost saint and a forgotten sinner and she's all alone on her own no one no one coming burningburningburninsBURNING-_

And she'd better suck it up and deal with it because Hammerhead wasn't getting any more dead while she was standing around. (Jade wouldn't have stood for such weakness. Neither would their father.)

The lightning flashed again illuminating everything and blinding her at the same time. It crackled down _Eden Tempest_ dancing like a force of nature never should, but always seemed to.

(She's a giant hunk of metal, getting struck by lightning wasn't unusual.)

She screamed again, like it would fuel something, and punched, hard enough and fast enough to yank part of the wiring free. And she punched him again and again and again forcing her crippled arm to work because the bolts of pain don't matter shit when every part of her is _burningburningburning_ and it was too soon and not soon enough that she crushed his glowing heart in her hands. (Not her and Jade's just _hershershersshe'salonethisisjustArtemis-)_

She ripped him apart, an eye for an eye, because that's how it went in what was left of her family. (Just her, alone little Artemis all alone _alonealonealone_ -) She couldn't hear Bruce, couldn't hear anything but the warm blood trickling from her ears and she spat it out when she tasted the coppery flavour on her tongue and it spilled from her nose and her eyesight was tinged red and blood poured down her face like tears and she can smell the rusty tang of it in her nose and it dribbled from her ears and seeped from her pores like sweat and it was all she was, every part of her was blood and rage and pain and _burningburningburningBURNING_ and no part of her was Jade and it never would be again and she turned and walked the Miracle Mile back to the shore, shaking the glowing blood off her fist.

The end of the world had been a long time coming, but it had finally hit Artemis.

* * *

 **Please R &R, I'll decipher that spider plan tomorrow, because with 12k+ on paper... well we'll see.**

 **Minor edits made on 09/05/2016.**


	2. Now I

**I owe my friend an awful lot for this, she's called Caitlin and she's the best, just FYI.**

* * *

 **Now I**

* * *

Construction is good, hard work, mind-numbing, and with Coastal Wall at Alaska, it's freezing work too. This is never going to work, but it gives her a place to sleep and a place to eat and a regular, if meagre, cheque to cash. She has money stocked up in an old bank account that she hasn't touched in five years. It's her and Jade's money all bundled together in an entirely too traceable way and it's enough to live comfortably on for however long is left for this world.

She doesn't want to be comfortable though, and more importantly, she doesn't want to be found.

So she lives paycheck to paycheck like any one of the thousands of invisible workers who live and die along the Coastal Wall. They all look the same, gaunt and gruff and desperate and somewhere between lost and not wanting to be found. (Hungry too, whatever slop they are serving up here isn't enough to fill any bellies, not ones that work so hard anyway.)

The foreman calls them together for some kind of announcement - maybe they've recognised the futility of the wall, or more likely there's a job needs doing.

(It's the second one.)

The foreman tells them there's been an accident, three accidents actually. (No one asks who. They'll all know by dinner, and they all know be now that it's better not to be getting friendly with anyone who chooses to be working on the Wall.) By consequence, there are three job openings higher up, right at the top of the Wall. It's high risk, dangerous work, but it's where the good money is.

Artemis volunteers. She's been angling to move higher up the Wall for a while now, get a clear view of the ocean while she still can. (It's hard to believe sometimes, thinking of all the beasties that crawled out of the Breach, that someone looked across this self-same horizon and named that ocean 'Peaceful'.) Artemis always gets picked when she volunteers for work; partially 'cause pickings' slim on the ground (even when your workforce is mostly to be made of people with a death wish) and the fact that her hair is eye-catching, she thinks. (It's hard to miss, so with a name like Artemis and a mane of tangled like spun gold, she wonders why no one recognises her. But maybe they just can't imagine her on her own, an individual as opposed to half a set. She and Jade didn't even look that much alike at all.) There aren't many women on the Wall, but she's good at what she does and doesn't like to think of herself as filling some kind of quota filled under 'Gender Equality.'

She and two others get their new lanyards and turn in the old ones. They'll let them go up top, even if the photos on the lanyards don't match their faces. None of the ones they've handed in match either. The name linked to the barcode on the outdated computer system is changed quickly. The foreman's had a lot of practice at that particular task. They were probably sticklers about that kind of thing when they started building the Wall, but in this burning cold, Artemis can't imagine anyone trying to get up to try blow up the Wall. (It's happened a few times, back when the Wall was snaking its way along warmer climates.)

Artemis hefts her welding torch on her shoulders when she steps out of the lift, bracing herself for the cold. (It's freezing, biting cold, the worst cold that she can imagine. It's painful, and each breath feels like needles filling her lungs.)

Tomorrow, Artemis is going to the Salvation Army to pick up a better coat (any coat really, she's been slumming it in a jacket and a worn out pair of thermals for too long) but today she's going to suck it up and deal with it, because that's what she does.

Ignore it, and keep going.

Try not to get introspective with it.

(It's probably not healthy. Dinah'd freak. But she's not here now and if what Artemis suspected about Dinah and Roy the Boytoy's co-pilot; Oliver, and her was true… Well, the _Black Canary_ fell a few months ago. No survivors. Which is a pity, because if what Dinah had with Oliver was anything like what Jade had with Roy, Artemis knows that in another world, it might have been a relationship.)

Artemis sighs, her breath visible as a plume of steam, and then she does it again. The cloud of rapidly dissipating steam is proof that she's still warm inside somewhere after all. She gets back to work. (Eighty percent of a good weld is in the set up, and Artemis can practically do that with her eyes closed now.) She huddles further into her jacket, listening with half an ear to the staticky daytime radio playing over the intercom system.

(It's fucking country music, but it's almost better than nothing.)

It's fruitless work, but it's enough to take her mind off of the dark thoughts creeping in around the edges. (They're distracting, and this is dangerous work.) For a little while, anyway. She needs that.

The view is breath taking.

(Or maybe that's the thinner air.)

What she doesn't need is the broadcast that crackles to life over the intercom radio. It's a news bulletin about the Coastal Wall (some people call it the Wall of Life, but Artemis has yet to see it save any lives, only kill desperate construction workers) being made quick work of by a Kaiju.

They call him Ban Kaippa.

It might mean something, it might not. (Artemis doesn't know how they name Kaiju, sometimes it's got to do with their features, sometimes not. It's not like with the Jaegers, where a supercomputer calculates a pleasingly phonaesthetic combination of words to sound both reassuring and fierce.)

But in the end, the only thing that could ever hope to stop a Kaiju shows up and does just that.

 _Doctor Fate_ is the only Mark IV Jaeger ever built, a golden colossus, and he's piloted by a father and daughter pair called Zatara and Zatanna. (They used to do be a magic act, the radio newsperson comments.) Artemis wishes she could see them fight, imagines going toe-to-toe with them.

There's a few words of an interview, about how everyone should be grateful they were still here to suit up, about how they're leaving their base for another tonight.

(It sounds like final stand talk to Artemis, and she struggles to count how many Jaegers are still standing.)

(She doesn't know, but it's not a lot.)

(Something sparks in her belly.)

She wants to believe she can take them (take them both, at the same time) but they've just broken her long held record (it's only hers, not Jade's, it's just her in the record books and now it won't be either of them) and she's more out of practise than she wants to think about. In doing so, they've gone and reminded everyone that the Coastal Wall scheme not only crappy, it's a waste of the money and resources that should be going to whatever's left of the Jaeger Programme.

(It isn't much, Artemis knows that.)

Morale, which was never high on the Wall to begin with, drops like a stone through still water. Artemis doesn't need that, it'll make people sloppy and sloppy leads to… well, it doesn't lead to sunshine and roses. (Artemis is going to find somewhere to train tonight. She needsto sharpen up.)

Everyone's shoulders sink even further as the radio goes back to its normal programming. Artemis can hear something under the tinny country music, but she doesn't listen too hard. Whatever it is, whirring familiarly, she's not interested.

She doesn't need this, the futility of it all hitting everyone at once. (It hit her a long time ago, she thinks, and then she tries not to think about exactly when.) And she definitely doesn't need that goddamn helicopter in particular showing up. It better not be what she thinks it is.

(It is. It fucking is.)

It's a helicopter, landing dead centre on the helipad that they have to have, but that Artemis is pretty sure has never been used.

The insignia on the side practically glows, and it means that bastard has finally found her, or else he's given up on pretending he didn't know where she was in the first place. (It's not as easy to disappear as it used to be, but Artemis thought she'd done a pretty good job.) For some reason or another, Bruce Wayne has decided to stop leaving well enough alone.

He's still as well dressed as alas, in a sharply cut suit that emphasizes a broad pair of shoulders. He's older though, greyer. He still stands as straight as he ever has, and Artemis finds it hard to believe that once upon a time this man had a reputation for being a drunken, irresponsible, out-of-control playboy. (That's a lie, Artemis can totally see why he'd be popular with the ladies, even now. He's hot, in an older man sort of way. And not even like, super old. Mid-forties, at the most.)

He isn't going to try convincing her of anything. (He probably won't even acknowledge her, but why else would he be here, so soon after what happened with the Coastal Wall in Sidney.) He's not that kind of leader, she'll come back or she won't. He wouldn't drag anyone kicking and screaming to the front lines. That won't save anyone, and it'll get a lot of people killed. (But. He's here. That's practically begging. Opening a line to come back. Offering her a lift and a seat and a space instead of waiting for her to come back, demanding a space.)

(He must be desperate.)

(He can't wait anymore.)

(Well. He can wait the ten minutes it takes her to get her stuff.)

He won't even talk to her until she agrees to come back, until she gets in the damn 'copter. He'll wait until her curiosity (that damn vice she can't seem to shake) gets the better of her, before spilling why he couldn't wait any longer, why he picked her of all people.

(Because she's the best, one half of the best team that ever fought on the frontlines of the ugliest war this world has ever seen.)

(Is half good enough?)

(It has to be.)

(He is desperate, after all.)

She sighs, heavily, and grabs her pack from the racks, before she flags down the foreman, and hands him her new old-lanyard, not even a day after she got it. He doesn't ask why, but there's a glimmer of recognition in his eyes that she's never noticed before.

Or maybe he'd never noticed before. She's standing differently now, she has a purpose. (She doesn't know what it is, but still, it's better than waiting for some beastie to tear down the Wall she worked so hard to build.)

(Best defence and all that.)

The foreman doesn't ask her any questions, just hands her last pay packet and lets her go. (She's a bit offended by that. She's about to get into a helicopter and fly off into the sunset with the head of the Jaeger Programme-forward-slash-richest man on earth.) He has plenty of people to replace her with, so one way or another; they'll keeping working on this fruitless venture.

Whatever it is that's going down, it's big. Bruce Wayne hunted her down in a helicopter to ask her (to stare at her for a while, same thing) to come back to the Jaeger Programme. It must be the end of days.

(This Apocalypse is taking a long time, but it is looming still, and humanity can't quite seem to shake it off.)

Artemis doesn't have the luxury of wanting much in life, she never has, but if the end of days is finally right around the corner, and she's going to die and meet Jade somewhere (with any luck, it won't be fire and brimstone, but she's never been lucky), she wants to do it somewhere she might call home.

(At least for a little while.)

(Or in a giant robot of death, going down in a blaze of glory like she'd planned.)

She's expecting that'll he'll explain everything once she gets on to the helicopter, but that's not how it's going to go down. They don't even make awkward small talk, they just sit in silence, letting the fact that she's on board with whatever this final madcap play is going to be sink in. (It's going to be something special, and she's not going to miss it for the world.)

But they don't exchange a single word.

When the final remaining Shatterdome, the last base that _Doctor Fate_ was heading to for a last ditch effort, comes into view over the horizon, Artemis sees a faint smile play over his lips. She's not sure what that's supposed to mean. (There was no turning around the moment she stepped into this helicopter.) They are well past the point of return for Artemis, and she is so far into this mess already that she can't imagine ever getting out and the helicopter hasn't even landed.

The last Shatterdome is known as The Cave, an enormous shell of a mountain dug out by and early Kaiju attack (Heliarx, if Artemis remembers right) and incorporated into a magnificent steel and glass structure; it's the most beautiful of the Shatterdomes, and the biggest. It's no wonder here is where they have chosen to go down in flames.

(This last stand thing, this effort isn't about turning the tide or winning the war. They are past the point of turning the tables, Artemis knows, but they can still go out in style, still give the Kaiju something to remember and something to regret ever coming to this little blue planet.)

(She's ready to be involved ready to get on board where-and-however they'll have her, whatever way they need her- as a welder, a pilot or just a woman with a GED and more issues than she wants to think about.)

(She can add that to the list of things she doesn't want to think about.)

The helicopter touches down so gently, she almost thinks it doesn't, but Bruce opens the door and gets out, holding it for her. She follows him, stepping down gently. This is not her territory, and as much as she thinks she wants to be here, her instincts are telling her to run as far and fast as she can.

(Also, to steal the helicopter, which is stupid, because she can't even fly one, so what do her instincts know, really?)

There's a lone ginger waiting for them, (probably just for Bruce, although she doubts that her coming was in denial the moment that wall came crashing down,) dressed in an open button down over some obscure nerd t-shirt. It's flapping in the wind caused by the helicopter. He's not letting that self-same wind bother him and the hefty looking submarine sandwich he's devouring.

His short hair is ruffling in the wind in a somewhat dignified manner at least, while her long tangled mane of blonde hair is whipping frantically and getting all up in her face and her mouth and at least it's not stuck to the lip gloss she isn't wearing. She pulls her jacket around her, clutching it against the rain. It's not much more than a drizzle, but it probably never lets up. He looks up, and tries to swallow what seemed like half of his sandwich at once.

Bruce steps out from behind Artemis, she can hear him sighing faintly at the welcoming committee.

(She gets it, something about that freckle faced guy makes her want to punch him in the face and go back to building the futile Wall. But her lanyard's long gone now, and who knows how long it'd take for her to work her way back up to that view.)

Ginger over there manages to stop choking on his lunch long enough to walk over, looking as though he's going to regret this. He wraps what remains of his sandwich up carefully. (Artemis appreciates that, and it goes a long way towards quelling the urge to break his nose. It's a crime to waste food.)

Artemis introduces herself, as politely as she knows how (that is to say, not very politely at all) and sticks out her hand.

"Artemis Nguyen, Mark II."

"I know who you are. Because uh, Bruce told me you were coming," his handshake is firm, if a little damp from the rain. Hers probably is too, like everything else in this city. Artemis hasn't had much skin to skin contact these past few years, and the warmth of his hand startles her. She flinches away from the contact reflexively.

She tries not to gape at the massive structure behind him in an attempt to avoid eye contact. (He's looking a bit too closely for her liking, and she can't imagine anyone liking what they see.) This Shatterdome, the Cave, is the largest in the world, and it's big enough to have its own climate.

(From what Artemis has heard, its own rainy, miserable climate.)

"I'm Wally West, Barry's nephew."

Artemis wants to ask where Barry is and how he's doing and what ever happened with Iris is the end and how was that long ago wedding she didn't attend. But she doesn't ask anything, because she's afraid of the answers.

(And because Wally can't seem to let anyone get a word in edgeways.)

If Barry was working here, surely he'd have come out to meet her? Artemis knows he'd never have quit, he was a Kaiju fanatic. Not the kind that believed they should all get on their knees and begin worshipping them, the kind that was obsessed with solving the mystery. The Kaiju were the biggest mystery the universe had offered humanity, and Barry had been desperate to solve it.

"Barry works from home now," Wally mentions, like he can read her thoughts. "He has ever since Iris had the twins, those kids are a handful."

Twins. Barry was a real parent now, not just a strange pseudo uncle who gave terrible advice when it came to doing homework. Artemis should probably say something, but Wally is too busy running his mouth and what's that-?

He tugs her towards him and holds up his phone to take a photo. Probably to send to Barry. It's been a long time since anyone wanted to take a photo with Artemis. She scowls, but before she can pull away from him, the flash goes off. She shoves him away before he shows it to her.

(It's not going to be pretty.)

"Barry used to tell me about you," Artemis says, while Wally busies himself with his phone. She doesn't care what he does with the photo; she's coming out of retirement and peaceful obscurity one way or another.

(People had looked for her; people still did probably, nutjobs with websites chock-full of blurry photos, like she was the goddamn Abominable Snowman.)

"Nothing bad I hope," Wally doesn't look up from his phone, but his eyes widen as it explodes with notifications. She's not sure what he posted it to, but he clearly wasn't expecting this. She'll find out later. If it's a slow day, she might make the news.

While he's busy staring and trying to shut off his notifications, Bruce tells Artemis that Wally heads up the restoration project.

"I make Franken-Jaegers, it's no big deal," Wally shrugs, finally settling for switching off his phone in resignation. Serves him right. He nods at the welding equipment she has slung over her back with her pack. "You could help out."

"Maybe."

(What else is she here for? This guy is an idiot.)

She follows Bruce and Wally inside, prepared for a grand tour of sorts. Artemis is sure that the Cave was once a beautiful place to live and work and win a war. Now it's a last, desperate hive of activity, the last Jaeger stronghold.

(It doesn't look all that strong to Artemis, but maybe it'll prove her wrong yet.)

Natural light streams through the glass, illuminating the piles of parts scavenged from fallen Jaegers, heaped in corners and empty Jaeger docking stations, to be rooted through as needs be. Artemis thinks she can recognise parts from _Black Canary_ , and _Dynamic Defiant_ and _Green Lantern_ and, and, and- she turns away. (She's not sure how many parts she wants to recognise, but there's too many of them up for grabs.)

Everything is slick and wet, only the specially formulated, rust proof coating protecting the armour of fallen heroes from disintegrating before they can be made useful again. (If they can be made useful again.) There are workers scavenging the piles, hurried and harried.

In the Jaeger Programme's prime, an individual Jaeger's team was like a pit crew, kitted out in matching jumpsuits to differentiate them from the other crews. Artemis recognises many of the once bright colours and patches- faded and stained and frayed. Many of them wear bog-standard navy-blue coveralls. They work wherever they are needed.

(It's a skeleton staff, stretched thin, over worked and over paid.)

Artemis doesn't see any of _Eden Tempest's_ crew, nor did she expect to, _Eden Tempest_ was not based here, after all. She imagines that they were all let go at some point. (She hopes that they moved inland. Far inland.)

The three of them round a final corner and the Jaeger docks are no longer filled with spare parts. Bruce introduces Artemis to each one as they pass then. (Not that she wouldn't recognise them, but she didn't think that there was so few left.) He points out their teams, never far from their Jaeger's these days.

 _Doctor Fate_ , the vast, golden Jaeger, Artemis's record breaker and the only Mark IIV ever built strikes an imposing figure. He looks like a knight in shining armour. (That was definitely on purpose.) That strange father/daughter pair is arguing next to his enormous golden feet. The bulldog lolling between them pays no heed to either of them as he chews a red rubber bone.

Next is _Poseidon_ , Mark III, and the only Jaeger to have a three man team. His third arm hangs over his shoulder awkwardly (no engineer had anticipated a third arm when building the docks.). _Poseidon_ is the only European Jaeger ever built, funded by the king of some European principality no one had ever heard of before.

Three men are playing cards quietly. Artemis is sure that's not the kind of table where cheating would be encouraged. Something doesn't line up in her memories, she is sure that the pilots of _Poseidon_ were two young men and a girl. It takes her a second to shift through her mind, but something is nagging at her, something she should know. When she remembers, she wishes she hadn't.

(His guard had piloted it, but one of the members had died, the King himself had stepped up to fill the gap. Artemis is sure that must have been an adjustment period and a half.)

(The pilot who'd died, Artemis remembers hearing it over the radio, had been a girl named Tula. She hadn't even died in a Jaeger; Tula had been assassinated by an obsessed fan. There weren't many of those to be had for the Jaeger pilots anymore, so no one had seen it coming. That had been a terrible day.)

The final Jaeger is _Martian Manhunter_ , Mark I, the oldest Jaeger still in operation. He used to be piloted by a Russian couple, but they were long out of the game, sick and dying slowly, somewhere. A pair of Americans look up the mantel. Bruce tells her their names, Megan Morse and Conner Kent. He tells her that they are married. (Which is a pity, because Artemis would've been on that if she could.)

They look happy together, though, which seems alien.

(Names ring a bell though, but she's not sure which bell it is.)

They turn a corner, Wally is still nattering about something or other and there she is, right where Artemis thought she'd never see her again. _Eden Tempest._

(Mostly, Artemis recognises that arm from _Black Canary_ replacing the her girl nearly lost. They mustn't've been able to fix it. The arm's been painted up to match _Eden Tempest,_ but she knows her girl like the back of her palm.)

The last time Artemis saw _Eden Tempest_ her view had been smeared by blood and harsh rain and the bitter cold, half her face torn away and one arm barely attached, crushed and shredded and splattered with glowing Blue Kaiju, the hot blood melting the snow she was lying in.

Now though.

She's as beautiful as the day Artemis first laid eyes on her, (half-finished and unpainted, plating still being welded into place. She hadn't been sleek, her heart out there for everyone to see, but she'd taken Artemis's breath away.). Everything comes rushing back, memories knocking her off her guard and out of breath like a well-placed blow.

 _clambering all over her girl like's she's a jungle gym instead of a Kaiju killing machine and praying and hoping that she gets to pilot her and welding plates together and laughing with Jade about what a terrible job she did and putting on the armour for the first time and fight Snapjaw and winning and fighting and fighting and fighting and fighting and fighting Hammertail and blaring klaxons and roaring and howling and screaming her ears are throbbing why is everything so loud what is happening where is Jade whereisjade whereisshe gonegonegonedyingdeadgone little girl all alone screaming and crying and fighting and little girl all alone screaming and fighting and dying and burning screamingfightingdyingburningscreamingfightingdyingburning-_

"Are you okay?" Wally touches her shoulder gently. Artemis shakes him off.

"I'm fine."

"You sort of spaced out-"

"I'm fine," Artemis growls through gritted teeth, and Wally steps back.

"Okay! If you're sure…" he trails off.

"I am."

Workers are scrambling over _Eden Tempest_ like ants, finishing her up neatly, checking welds (she can see her amateurish welds from here, she's gotten so much better since then) and buffing her to polished perfection. She hasn't looked so good in years, Artemis is willing to bet.

Artemis doesn't want to drift again, not ever, doesn't want someone's dying thoughts ringing through her nightmares, but no one is piloting her girl without her while she's still alive. They'll have to go through her, and she has no doubt about why they want her anymore.

(She's the best.)

It's hard to drag Artemis away from her Jaeger (her Jaeger! Her and Jade's. The Jaeger Jade died in.). It's no easier a task to get Wally (he won't stop nattering on about the restoration project, and all the work he did on _Eden Tempest_ ) back on track for the grand tour, but Bruce manages both tasks somehow.

Wally is still talking about the strides they've made in Jaeger technology (despite that, _Tempest_ is still analogue, for whatever budgetary cutback reason) and his work in designing, engineering and restoration, the big ideas that they don't have the money for and the small ideas that they do. Wall seems to makes some terrible attempt at flirting with every girl they pass, most of whom seem used to it, and brush him off.

Artemis is exempt for some reason, and she's a bit offended by that. She's glad though. He's treating like a human being, and it's the first time she can remember being treated as such in a long time.

(When she was a little kid, she was soldier, and when she was a homeless teen, she was nobody, then she was a Jaeger Pilot, and then she was nothing again. She's not sure what she is right now, but human? It feels nice.)

Wally's constant yammering is like a white noise machine, or a radio tuned to Nerd FM. She didn't have to listen, but the sound of his voice pushed out thoughts that crept in around the edges when she was faced with all of this familiarity. It was nice, learning about Jaegers and Kaiju again.

(She wondered if Barry told him that.)

Research and Development used to be a big, bustling department, but Artemis barely recognised it for what it was supposed to be. It's a cavernous space, with carved out rock walls and steel beams preventing the high roof from caving in on them. Kaiju parts pulse in stasis tubes with an absurd kind of horror movie aesthetic, the eerie light they cast illuminating empty tables and high, smeared chalk boards. The entire division appears devoid of human life.

Wally drags her over to what Artemis can only assume is his desk while Bruce takes a disapproving stroll. He's used cubicle walls to build himself a little cubby, and his desk is overflowing with loose sheets of paper and models of Jaegers(Artemis recognises some of them as the model building sets that were once exceedingly popular, but some are made meticulously of paper and she does not recognise them.). Curled and faded blueprints and AutoCad drawings are pinned to the cubicle walls, overlaid with sheets of tracing paper illustration suggested modifications,

Artemis moves around, inspecting things and picking them up and trying to put them back down without breaking them or knocking anything over. She shifts her pack and her welding gear on her back. Carrying your whole life around is heavy.

She turns a corner, eager to explore whatever else might be in here, and someone gets punched in the face.

(It's not even her good arm, so he gets off with a bloody nose and maybe a black eye. Artemis isn't going to apologise. That level of Kaiju obsessed body modification probably makes babies cry regularly and he has no right to complain if he gets punched in the face by jumpy women in their early twenties who've been trained to punch monsters in the face.)

(Not that it stops him from complaining anyway.)

Wally manages to stop him whining about his nose for long enough to be introduced. ("L'gann, Artemis- Artemis, L'gann,") He really does look terrifying though, grey green skin and ridges wrapping over his shoulders and… And Artemis can't believe who it is he modeled himself after, once she recognises it.

Hammertail.

She wants to punch him again. And again.

Her thought process is rudely interrupted by a familiar cackle drifting from the rafters and echoing off the cave walls.

Grayson drops down, and no one jumps, clearly used to his sudden and unexpected arrivals and vanishing acts. He punches L'gann fondly on the arm, and tells him that he should've expected that to happen sooner. His voice is deeper than Artemis remembers. When he looks at Artemis, he seems unsurprised, but also like everything he's been thinking about saying when he finally ran into again after all these years has deserted him.

Artemis steps up and wraps her arms around him, hugging him tightly. His shoulders are broader and he's taller than her now.

He stiffens for a moment, but Artemis tries to put a lot into the hug- how sorry she is that she left him alone, how impressed she is by how much he has grown, how proud she is of whatever it is he's made himself into while she was gone (how much she hopes she's not a disappointment to him.). When he finally hugs her back, it's like the message has been received.

Dick tells her about his work, bragging and boasting that the Jaeger Programme would be a disaster without him (Wally looks a little miffed to have his to taken away, and Artemis guesses that no one comes in here too often anymore to find out about the latest and greatest advancements in Kaiju related sciences. (Evolution prediction algorithm engines were never successfully developed, and although Artemis suspects that will become Barry's life's work, it may never be cracked in time enough to be of any real use.)

L'gann looks like her wants to storm off somewhere or something, but it has been an awfully long time since anyone was genuinely interested in the Research and Development division. Instead, he starts vying for her attention with Dick like a spoiled toddler. They tug Artemis this way and that, while Wally pretends like he doesn't care about her wandering attention.

He tugs his phone out of his pocket, grimacing when he turns it one, only for it to blow it with notifications. He scrubs a hand through his short hair.

Dick smirks, leading her to his workstation. It was up in the rafters, and the climbing muscles she'd neglected for so long burned on the short trip up. It was top heavy with the most advanced tech money could buy and mount to a wall thirty feet above the ground. (All if it is Wayne Tech, which they probably get for free.) Thick cables carried power to it, and there was a couple of white boards mounted on the steel beams. Dick believed in numbers, and coding, constantly writing and rewriting programmes and software to predict Kaiju attacks and categories.

(He doesn't answer when Artemis asks him who names the Kaiju, but he does tell her that if she wants to name one, he knows a guy.)

(Artemis puts in a request, and Dick cackles.)

L'gann believed in biology, and strove to predict Kaiju evolution patterns. His work space was in the centre of a cluster of stasis tubes, and the glowing green light reflecting off the slightly outdated, but still functional lab equipment combined with the reptilian humanoid gave off a vibe best explained by the presence of the framed cross stitch with the words 'Caution: Mad Scientist At Work' under H.P. Lovecraft's infamous Cthulhu.

(Artemis is never coming back here again this guy's terrifying inside and out.)

Neither of them thinks that the other contributes anything meaningful or worthwhile to the cause.

Of course, Wally was sitting high and mighty, assured of his value to what was left of the Jaeger Programme. He began aiming not-so-subtle digs at them, sparking fights and more science than Artemis has witnessed in years.

When she smiles at him to show her gratitude, he's too busy shoving his phone in a drawer to notice. Artemis really does have to check that out later. She didn't expect people to make this big of a deal out of it. (But she had been a pretty big deal. Not to brag or anything.)

(But first she'll have to get a phone. Rule one of disappearing, drop the social media and anything overtly traceable by organizations with more resources than you want to think about.)

Before there could be blows, (for a second time) Bruce comes back around, radiating disappointment when he encounters the entirety of the Research and Development (all two of them) deep in the thralls of an argument about the merits of their individual specialities. He sighed and told them he had to show Artemis to her room, in order to let her get settled in. (She was looking forward to, or rather, she was looking forward to not carrying everything she owned around anymore.)

She swipes a fat lump of gummy Blu-Tack from Wally's desk before she leaves, though. She's going to need it.

Artemis's new home reminds her of a submarine. An oblong door with a wheel you spun in order to open the door. Windowless, the bunk was bare (you had to supply your own bedlinen, and Artemis fondly remembers sleeping on the bare mattress for a couple of weeks before they managed to scrounge up a set of bedsheets) so Artemis spreads her sleeping bag(the one she's been using ever since she left the Jaeger Programme) over the bunk tucked neatly into a little alcove.

For the first time since she left the Shatterdome (not the Cave, but that Shatterdome had been deactivated, and stood empty as many buildings near the coastline did these days) Artemis unpacks her bag completely.

What clothes she has are faded are worn thin, but she can't bring herself to part with them just yet (she does not find herself over eager to go shopping, either) and she folds them neatly into the drawer that rolls out from under her new bed. Testing the strength of the shelf over her new bed (god knows this could result in disaster) in order to store her welding equipment up there, she finds that someone (Bruce or Dick, most likely) has put something up there that she hasn't seen in a long time. She isn't sure she wants to see it up there, so she pulls it out and carefully runs her hands over the case, like it might dematerialize under her touch.

It's her violin.

She shoves it roughly (not too roughly) back up on the shelf, hiding it carefully behind her heavy welding equipment. She doesn't want to look at it right now.

Instead, Artemis heels the shoebox out onto her bed, and using every scrap the Blu-Tack she'd stolen from Wally's desk, sticks up every photograph, every newspaper clipping, every memory that can possibly be fastened to a wall with a scrap of Blu-Tack that she can. Not all nostalgia is quite so susceptible to the powers of Blu-Tack, so she strings the medals (some of them sharing ribbons, clanging together beautifully) on the coat rack on the back of her door. (It's cold and miserable here, she sincerely doubts she will ever go anywhere without her coat willingly.) The autobiography (the one she still hasn't read, she'd have read it if they'd done an audiobook) and the interviews she's never rewatched go on the shelf over her small desk, with her action figures standing guard over the whole thing.

There's no chair, which Artemis finds herself annoyed at. (What is she supposed to sit on to work?)

It doesn't feel like anything close to home, but an outside observer might be fooled into thinking that she's 'settling in nicely'. Artemis wonders if there's a nearby IKEA she can get a chair from, or if anyone would notice if one of the many chairs from the Research and Development Division went missing. (They probably would, those nerds.)

Her waterproof watch tells her that it's near enough dinner for there to be food in the canteen. (She's not hungry, but she doesn't have anything else to do.) She heads down to where she thinks the canteen is. The layout of the Cave is similar to the Shatterdome she was based in before, so she doesn't think she'll get lost. She has a good sense of direction anyway.

She makes it to the canteen with no mishaps. She can feel everyone staring at her. Word has gotten out quickly, after all. She should've expected this, she did expect this, but that doesn't make her feel any less awkward. Are they in awe of her, because of her relative celebrity, or are they enraged that she abandoned the cause all those years ago? Or are they smug that she has come crawling back?

(She doesn't know, but she doesn't like this.)

The food looks like slop, but it's hot and she can have heaping piles of it, if she so wishes. (Besides, she's not unaccustomed to minus three Michelin star foodstuffs.)

Artemis has no idea where to sit, she feels like the new kid, only it's a thousand times worse. Because she's not the new kid, she's the prodigal son. (Minus the fatted calf and still-living sibling.) Everyone is still staring at her, and it makes her skin crawl. She feels hemmed in in a way she hasn't in years, her eyes darting around for an empty seat or an exit route or a vaguely familiar face…

(Her and Jade used to sit together, no matter where they went, they had each other. None of the people her where stationed at her old base, so none of the mechanics or technicians or maintenance workers she used to hang out with are here.)

Someone grabs her arm, and she rounds on them, read to split a lip when she she meets a pair of twinkling green eyes.

(This is ridiculous. What light source in here is permitting his eyes to twinkle? Certainly not the unflattering fluorescents. This is absurd.)

"Sit with us," is what he tells her. The Research and Development department sits at a table he drags her over to, tucked in the corner out everyone's way. Dick and L'gann are arguing again (Artemis is willing to bet that is all they ever do), and the people at the other end of the table are doing their level best to ignore them. (They don't seem to be having any trouble doing so, so Artemis thinks they must be used to this arrangement.) They eye Artemis curiously over L'gann and Dick.

It takes her a minute to recognise them.

(Not that anyone could blame her, she's never seen them before today, and that was from a distance.)

It's a handful of the only active Jaeger pilots on the planet.

(And seeing as it isn't a gig many people live to retire from, Artemis figures they've got the inactive ones outnumbered, even though there's only five of them sitting at the table.)

Zatanna is sitting next to Dick, paying no heed to his quarrel, shuffling a deck of cards quickly. She's moved her tray out the way in order to clear up some space for a game, and she looks almost bored, like nobody at the table is any challenge. (Artemis can feel arrogance bubbling up inside her, daring herself to challenge this girl in any way she can for beating her record.)

Conner and Megan are sitting quietly together, but Megan elbows her husband (hard, Artemis doesn't envy his being on the end of that) to make him say hello. He grunts it, gruff and unwelcoming maybe, but not entirely unpleasant. (Especially when an imagination as active as Artemis's immediately places that voice in a very different context.) Up close, Artemis can't help but notice something she'd missed about Megan – she's inked, head to toe, if Artemis had to guess. A pale green, intricate lattice of lacework. Even from here, it's almost invisible on Megan's pale skin.

It's strange and beautiful, and it looks like it was painful.

(Artemis doesn't ask about it.)

Conversely, the glimpses that she manages to catch of Conner's tattoos (they might be sleeves, but she can't see enough to tell), under where the cuffs of his aviator jacket have ridden up; the colours are harsh and bold, with dark and heavy line work. They're a study in opposites, Artemis thinks.

Looking around, they aren't the only two with some serious ink, but looking badass is paramount to a Jaeger pilot.

(Not that Artemis had ever needed a tattoo to appear badass. It had seemed extravagant, and she had something much better, and far worse to prove herself now anyway.)

Artemis can see ink on the two _Poseidon_ pilots seated at the table as well, Kaldur (tall, biracial, hot, giving off a bit of gay vibe, appears to have gills?) has closely shorn blonde hair and great shoulders and Garth, whose rocking a ponytail and hair that can only be described as luscious locks. They share a similar taste in black bands wrapping around their nicely muscled arms. (An image of a girl Artemis doesn't know floats to the forefront of her mind, bearing the same style of tattoo, a frozen grin in contrast with the headline below it, announcing her assassination.) They nod in acknowledgement.

And that's what the table Wally has shown her to looks like (like a whole pile of neighbourhood weirdos squeezed into a corner where no one has to make eye contact) and Artemis decides that, even if it turns out she doesn't like it, she doesn't have anywhere else to sit anyway.

Megan moves her tray out of the way to play a half-hearted game of Strip Jack Naked with Zatanna. Her hair is cropped short (in what can only be described as an adorable pixie cut) but she keeps glancing at Artemis long, tangled ponytail wistfully. She loses the card game quickly, but Artemis doesn't know if that's because Zatanna, even while barely paying attention, is a cardsharp or if her hair has driven her to distraction.

Wally does most of the talking (a role he was born to fill) while Artemis scarfs down whatever dinner was. Then it's time for twenty questions, and then some.

Some of the questions are about the five years she was away (the subject dies quickly, she's not interesting in talking about it, and it wasn't all that interesting anyway.

Everyone wants to know about the years she spent as a pilot, at the height of the Jaeger Programme. (She slips back into her former celebrity with relative ease.) Artemis forget that most people are patently uninterested in the Jaeger Pilots these days. (You can become desensitized to giant monster pummelling robots eventually, as it turns out.) They are all so new at this compared to her, and even though they are all more or less the same age, they seem so young, and if not starry-eyed, certainly incredulous at the thought of having action figures and almost limitless budgets and hope.

Megan and Conner's Jaeger might be Mark I, but _Martian Manhunter_ is still a hand-me-down. _Poseidon_ was privately funded (as privately funded as you can consider the funding of a king in a constitutional monarchy) and _Doctor Fate_ is likely the last Jaeger that will ever be built. Artemis and her (mostly deceased, or on their way to it) peers had come and gone by the time this sets of pilots had strapped into a Jaeger. She was a Rock Star (retired now, but announcing a no-doubt sell-out comeback tour) these guys are considered by most people to be a necessary evil.

(How times have changed.)

She tells them then, as honestly as she can manage (without being sappy or crying or anything dumb like that) that it was fucking awesome. (She met Ellen and the President and she's attributed with writing a book that made the New York Times bestseller list. She has her own goddamn action figure on her desk. She can't lie about this in any way that would convince anyone.)

They don't ask her any questions about fighting Jaegers, they know exactly what that's like. (A herculean task, but not impossible yet.)

Conner introduces her to Wolf, after dinner. He tries convincing her that it's a dog, but she remains unconvinced. There was this series when Artemis was younger, a medieval fantasy story that everyone was obsessed with (Artemis never watched it, but it was one of those things, you know, enough people not shutting up about it that you couldn't escape some worthless trivia squeezing its unwanted way into your head.) and it had these horse-sized wolves that people used to ride around on sometimes.

Conner's dog looks like one of those. Wolf is big and scary, with sharp teeth about as long as Artemis's fingers, a thick white winter coat and likes tummy rubs. (Artemis gets it.) He's a sweet puppy, even if he could eat her and still have room for dessert.

Megan looks on disapprovingly, and it's only later that she tells Artemis that Wolf is not normally a friendly dog, and that he tends to display his immediate distrust for most people aggressively. Artemis growls fiercely at the implications, if she's going down, there's no better way to get taken down then by a giant mass of muscle and fluff. Wolf agrees cheerfully, tongue lolling as he crushes Artemis's legs under his weight.

It takes a while to extract herself, and say goodnight, before she makes her way to her strange submarine pod. (As she's leaving Megan looks like she wants to say something, but thinks better of it, lapsing into silence after calling the first syllable of Artemis's name.)

It's early to be going to bed, but Artemis hasn't been made useful yet, and she doesn't want to sit around with her thoughts any longer than she has to. The mattress is hard, but it's softer than anything Artemis has slept on in a while and Artemis has never become accustomed to anything resembling the lap of luxury.

She imagines that she has a lot to do tomorrow, and hopes for a good night's sleep.

(When Artemis wakes in the middle of the night, sweating and panting and panicking, swinging her fists at a subconscious enemy, she draws a handful of shaky breathes before cracking open the dusty violin case and methodically tuning it. The sharp sounds are familiar to her, evening out her rapid heartbeat and her stiff, hardened fingers soften against the smooth wooden surface.)

(Afterwards, she sleeps, if not like a baby, at least through the whole night.)

* * *

 **Please R &R. Also, I know this seems like a lot of nothing, but it's a lot of important nothing, if you ask me.**


	3. Now II

**Uh, I really wasn't sure where to end this one. In fact, as I'm posting this I'm still not sure.**

* * *

 **Now II**

* * *

Artemis wakes up early, like she always has. Something's going to happen today, but no one has bothered telling her what. She wishes the best of luck to whoever has to tell her that they are looking into finding her a new partner for whatever hare-brained scheme they have come up.

(She'd rather do it on her own, flying solo and burning her way through the Kaiju, but that's not know it works.)

She's not looking forward to whatever method they have found to try find her a partner, wherever they have managed to find people still interested in trying to pilot a Jaeger.

(There aren't any retirees, so everyone they have found will be eager for some kind of glory and greener than Wally West's eyes.)

There better be something good in the canteen today, for breakfast, she'll need it.

She also needs a shower, so she heads there first, armed with a pair of thin threadbare towels. She showers quickly, mindful of wasting hot water. Despite everything and then some, Artemis has never felt vulnerable in her naked body. (There's a certain pride in the scars she bears, and how she fought even while they also serve as a reminder of the worst day of her life.) Artemis knows she looks great naked, it's a privilege to see her in any state of undress, but it's freezing once she's out of the barely hot spray of water so she dries off and dresses quickly, yanking a brush through her damp hair and letting it hang loose down her back to dry.

There's a handful of communal blow-dryers, but Artemis doesn't have the time it would take to dry her hair, so she ignores them and heads to the canteen, hanging her towels up in her room as she passes.

The damp seeps into the back of her shirt, chilling her.

Breakfast is scrambled eggs and toast, or cereal. It's better fare that Artemis has had in a while, last night's dinner notwithstanding. She has some yellow pack Rice Krispies that demonstrate a remarkable inability to stay even remotely crisp when confronted with the barest splash of soy milk.

(She's really glad that they have that here, being lactose intolerant is no joke.)

She eats them anyway. Food is food, and Artemis learned a long time that no matter how disappointing it is, wasting it is unjustifiable. She'd really like some tea, but canteen tea had proven to be the holy mother of all disappointing food items, so she forgoes it and heads back to her room, unsure of what else to do.

When she gets there, Wally is knocking her door like there's no tomorrow, ready to bust his knuckles on the metal. He must've drawn the short straw.

"Hey," Artemis ventures, drawing attention to the fact that she isn't beyond the door he's hammering on.

"You! I mean-" Wally clears his throat. "We have a shortlist of prospective pilots waiting for you, if you'd like to meet them."

Artemis nods.

"They're in the- I'll just take you there," he's not as cheerful in the morning, Artemis notes. But then again, who is?

She nods again, short and perfunctory,

"A lot of people are going to be there," he warns her.

"Saving the world is a spectator sport."

Hopefully he doesn't recognise that. She stole it from an old movie, but she can't remember which one. (she makes a note to google, something she won't do.)

He doesn't comment on it, lapsing into silence and leading the way to the Gym, specifically the sparring mat. Artemis has never tested for Drift Compatibility with anyone before, unless you counted Jade. (And Artemis doesn't imagine that anyone does, because she and Jade practically walked off the street and into a Jaeger.)

She does know that there's more than one way to test for it, and she knows that not all partnerships are created equal. (Some are made up of leaders and followers, some are partners who make joint decisions, some are made up of people who give and take. One pair, just one, once described it as being a single person.)

There's a set of bleachers, crowded with the other pilots, the R&D and anyone who was bored and had enough free time to come out and watch her dance.

(Not that she's actually going to dance, unless she is, because she's heard that works for testing Drift Compatibility.)

(She's also heard that charades, pictionary and bridge are great for testing it, but c'mon- who plays bridge?)

She can hear people making bets quietly, but she can't hear enough to know who the favourite is.

(They are curious, and Artemis can't blame them. Besides, right now, there's fuck all for them to do, there's no new recruits to train anymore, and the Ban Kaippa samples won't arrive until tomorrow.)

She surveys the candidates, not all of them are as green as she thought they'd be. There's three retired pilots, dug up out of some backwater town after they quit because their partner was injured somehow or killed (like Jade.). None of them look too eager to be here, none of them are Mark II, none of them were all that great, and as far as Artemis remembers, none of them fight like her.

(Brutal. Vicious. Savage. Fast.)

But they came anyway.

(Because Bruce asked them to, because they are desperate.)

(because it is better to die facing a Kaiju in a Jaeger, then cowering from one in your own too-fragile body.)

The green candidates are bouncing on their heels, eager to prove themselves, glancing towards Bruce Wayne like his word means something in here. He's watching over them, at the side of the match with an impartial expression on his face. She'd feel better if he sat down, but Bruce would never sit when he could stand, tall and imposing, looming over all her surveys.

"We're not hoping for a perfect match here, just someone who you can Drift with for long enough to run defence," Wally tells her.

"Run defence for what?" Artemis asks. (It's about time someone told her what was really going on here.)

"We're still fine-tuning that," Wally admits. "Just remember, it's a dialogue, not a fight."

(What the fuck was that supposed to mean? A fight is a fight. A conversation is a conversation. In Artemis's experience the only acceptable overlap is smack-talk.)

Wally goes to stand beside Bruce, holding a clipboard. Dick throws something at him, but he doesn't turn around, even when it hits him in the back of the head. Artemis smirks, and Dick offers her a covert thumbs up, mouthing something at her.

She toes off her boots, and they take her worn-out, holey socks with them. Her toenails are painted a cheap, glittering colour. (Artemis isn't sure she wants anyone to know that she paints her toenails, but that ship has evidently sailed.) She glances over to the bleachers, where everyone is watching, anticipating a show.

(She'll give them a show.)

She peels off her tank and thermal, leaving herself in a sports bra. A strangled noise comes from the sidelines and she can hear Bruce's disapproval. It radiates. But for the most part, awe washes over her, eyes tracing the scars left by her armour, where it seared into her skin. It's especially apparent along her skin. She stretches briefly, her joints popping, before stepping onto the mat.

The plastic surface is familiar under her toes and they curl in anticipation. Artemis has been spoiling for a fight for years, even if this isn't one.

The first one steps out onto the mat, cautiously. Her reputation precedes her. (She's never pulled any punches, but it seems like today is going to be the day to start. She's going to have to adapt. No one's going to fall into step with her rhythm.)

He's on the balls of his feet, fists raised like a boxer. She hops up, falling into the position like she belongs there, waiting for him to come at her, so she can see what he's made of.

As it turns out, not much.

(God bless him.)

She's a little out of shape and out of practice and it takes her longer than it should, but the rest of them go out in pretty much the same way. She doesn't hesitate, doesn't pull her punches. She doesn't have time to partner with anyone eager to hold themselves back.

(They learn not to after the first two, even as she tries to adapt, fit herself to match their style, she can't quite manage it all the time.)

The candidates she has beaten are lined up against the wall, nursing various bruises and wounded pride. They are the top of their classes, among the best of the best. They are hungry to prove themselves and top-full of ambition. (But Artemis is so much farther past the line than any of them. She has always been hungry and desperate and felt the gnawing sensation in her stomach that feeds everything she is and wants.)

Bruce is radiating disappointment. At her, at his chosen candidates. They have all failed him, in one way or another. Artemis is dripping sweat all over the springy blue sparring mat. Bruce purses his lips and thinks a moment before addressing her. Wally takes a sly step away, and Artemis fights down a smile.

(She remembers teachers yelling at her for smirking during their lectures, and while she didn't care then, she doesn't think she needs a recurrence today.)

For the first time, Bruce looks tired.

(Artemis thought he'd have a hundred other candidates tucked up his sleeves. She is wrong.)

This is it. This is all they have, the best people they could convince to try getting into a Jaeger with her. (He doesn't need say it out loud, but they all hear it.) This was the best they could do, and it is plaintively not good enough.

(They are not good enough, she is not good enough.)

Bruce isn't interested in Artemis matching someone else's style, confining herself to a discipline like so many of them have (even is she could) they want someone who fights with everything they have, life and death, black and white. Bruce wants Artemis, not some watered down variation.

(He wants that desperate instinctual yearning to survive that makes up every part of her, whether she wants it to or not.)

He stops then, thinking deeply.

(Over his shoulder Artemis can see Dick grinning as he smugly pats his pocket. Of course he instigated the betting pool.)

Bruce says he needs to think for a while, and that they are all to meet back here tomorrow for his final decision. Artemis can't wait.

(She can. She really can.)

He dismisses them like that, the candidates are grumbling and wondering. Artemis doesn't believe she's Drift Compatible with any of them. (Or with anyone that isn't Jade, the only person to go through the exact same fuckery disguised as a childhood that she did. But Jade's long out of the running.)

The candidates all head to the showers, (Artemis is the only woman, don't think she didn't notice) and as soon as she's out of her second shower of the day, muscles aching and a small few bruises starting to form, she's ambushed.

Megan's lucky she didn't get her nose broken, in Artemis's opinion.

But seeing as Megan has already decided that they are best friends, and it would be rude not to become integrated into the group of her fellow pilots, she let herself get swept up in the crowd.

(Besides, it's not like she's got a whole lot of options for a friend group here.)

"You kicked their asses," Wally crows, like that's a good thing. "I mean. I knew you were good, Barry showed me all your fights, even-"

Dick elbows him, (and from what Artemis remembers, he has some pretty vicious elbows) and Wally shuts up as much as Artemis thinks he is ever able to. (I.E. with a great deal of very loud protesting and not for very long at all.)

Everyone is talking and laughing, despite everything, filling the empty corridors with life. Megan and Conner are holding hands like the high school sweethearts that they are, with Wolf trotting beside them. His tails thuds against Wally every time she scratches behind his ear.

(It's going to leave a healthy bruise, so she scratches behind Wolf's ear a lot.)

It disrupts his conversation with L'gann about the 'stats' of the candidates he chose, because he takes a second to glare at the back of her head every time she does it. It makes Kal and Garth laugh, every time she does it, so she doesn't stop. (Those boys need to smile more, she can see it on their too-serious faces.)

Dick has sidled up to Zatanna and the bulldog that shadows her. (He's called Brucely, which Artemis hopes is at the expense of one Mr. Wayne.) He's making a lot of awkward jokes and gooey bedroom eyes.

(Artemis wants to be far away when that happens.)

(Artemis recognises the beginnings of So-Not-A-Big-Thing when she sees it.)

Everyone wants to pretend they aren't too attached to each other, so that maybe when Death comes a-knocking on their door it won't hurt as much as it really, really will. It's a mentality Artemis is intimately familiar with and these guys are terrible at it.

(She's not sure how she feels about making friends, they will break her heart, and she will break theirs'. That's the world they live in, such as it is.)

Lunch is as she remembers it, a grilled cheese sandwich and some kind of soup (today it's tomato, which is the best kind of soup you can dip a grilled cheese sandwich into, as far as Artemis knows. Not that she does, because lactose intolerance said so) and they all head for the same corner table that they sat at for dinner last night.

Artemis eats quickly, she doesn't feel like hanging around today. She's overwhelmed by all the camaraderie.

(It's not that she doesn't like it, or that some part of her doesn't want to have friends again, but it's not going to end well for any of them.)

Two older men join them, just as Artemis is getting up to leave. Zatara (Zatanna's Dad, and Artemis can see that getting very confusing very fast.) and the King of the Tiny European Principality or whatever. (What's his name? Is there a polite way to ask that? Garth and Kal just refer to him as 'my king' literally all of the time.) The group is noticeably quieter with their arrival, waiting for the older men to speak.

Artemis leaves, like she meant to five minutes ago. (Just because he's a king, doesn't mean he has any right to get in the way of her plans.) She wants to… not be here right now. Someone gets up to follow her, but she doesn't check who.

(She's too busy hoping that they change their mind about following her, or that they were just using her as an out.)

Of course, seeing as he can't shut up for more than a minute at best, it becomes very clear, very fast exactly who her chaperone is.

"You'll find someone," Wally says, sticking his foot so far into his mouth that she's amazed that he can get words out past it. "you aren't that special."

"I had someone."

"Someone else. Maybe they won't be as good, but there'll be someone else."

They lapse into silence for all of a minute before Wally offers to take her down to the Jaeger hanger for a good long look at _Eden Tempest._

(It's the best news Artemis has heard all day.)

 _Tempest_ is still beautiful (still perfect) and Artemis listens as Wally carefully explains the changes they've made.

(Artemis asks if she can change hemispheres, if that's been done before. Wally can't say he knows a specific example, but he thinks it's probably okay, since she managed to pilot solo that one time.)

She climbs all over the great mechanical form, ignoring Wally's increasingly nervous calls for her to be careful, pointing out all her handiwork. (These really are terrible welds. How have they held, when so many others did not?)

When she has scaled every inch of her girl and finally decides to come down from her steel giantess, Wally is talking to Conner, and Wolf is looking at her hopefully, like she somehow has a dog biscuit tucked away somewhere. He has to make do with a scratch behind the ears, and his tail thumps against the ground while he leans heavily against her.

Conner is taller than Wally (who is a lanky beanpole to begin with) and has approximately two-point-five times the amount of shoulder. So when he stands up straight, and fixes his piercing blue eyes on her in a very serious way, it makes her a little worried.

(More concerned, actually, this guy looks like a bearer of bad news.)

He wants to know if, after dinner, she'd let Megan do her hair. It would really make his wife's day apparently.

(Well, they are supposed to be best friends.)

The rest of the day is spent in waiting. There's probably going to be a lot of that from now on out, but the other pilots have found their own ways of dealing with it, so Artemis does too. She doesn't want to get in the way of their time-passing, so she resolves to find her own way to while away the long hours.

(She spends the entire day in Research and Development, carrying heavy things for the set of weedy nerds there. L'gann and Dick are happy enough for her to pretend to be useful but Wally protests at her assertion, flexing his bicep. It bulges very unimpressively, and Dick cackles, asking him if he got that from carting around his tuba.)

(Wally West, as it turns out, is not only a nerd, he's a band geek too.)

(Artemis files that information away for later. She'll be able to hold that against him at some point.)

That evening, after dinner, when Megan knocks on Artemis's oblong submarine door, she's armed and dangerous. Artemis shoves the hairbrush she was yanking through the snarls in her hair, into a mostly empty drawer before and opens the door. She's not sure it's made a difference.

(Artemis widens her eyes at the pile of stuff in Megan's arms.)

She has all sorts of clippy things, elasticky ponytail holders that look like they still stretch and devices to change your hair from straight to curly and back again. More importantly she has a box of freshly made, warm cookies, the chips still melted in them.

When politely offered the box, Artemis yanks the tupperware apart trying to get to the cookies.

Megan doesn't bother politely hiding her curiosity while she looks around, taking in all the photos of Artemis and Jade and everyone she considered a friend tacked up on the walls. She looks a little surprised at how hopeful they look, eyes shining, and smiles so bright and full and victorious. Megan snorts when she catches sight of the action figures (she can laugh all she wants, those things are collectables and fetch a pretty penny on ebay for whatever reason) but composes herself quickly. She glances around at the rest of Artemis's property quickly before she starts gushing gratefully.

(Artemis insists she doesn't mind, and it's clearly a lie, but the cookies ease the ensuing guilt.)

In the hours that follow, Artemis manages to eat every single cookie (well, almost every) that Megan baked and learns that Megan has twelve younger sisters whose hair she used to braid regularly. (Artemis can't imagine having that much family, or liking them that much. Sometimes she's not even sure she loved Jade, but Jade was all she had.)

Megan talks a lot, which is nice, because Artemis just feels like listening today. She's not much for sharing, but it's nice to just sit and have her ear talked off while Megan battles with her hair. (And make no mistake, it is a battle.)

Megan tells her a lot of things, like that her and Conner were both cops, beat cops, before they were Jaeger pilots. That she and Conner dated in high school, when they were fifteen and broke up for a few years before they were assigned as partners the same precinct in Las Vegas. When _Manhunter's_ pilots retired, (sick and slowly dying) the call had gone out, searching for people who were already partnered in high risk, professional situations. The entire precinct had applied- more because of a competitive interest in who would get the farthest. No one had believed anyone would really pass the test, especially not them.

Megan tells Artemis about how she and Conner got married in a twenty four hour chapel the day they were asked to join the Jaeger Programme. (It's the sort of beautiful, awe-inspiring romance you only find in the eye of the shitstorm.)

Artemis laughs when Megan relays how mad each of her sisters had been when they found out. She hasn't laughed in a long time, and the sound is harsh and startling. (Did it always sound like that? It's not the kind of pleasing, tinkling bell laugh that people are supposed to document.)

Wistfully, Megan paints a picture of a different life, one she might've liked to have, if not for the beasties climbing through the Breach. There's a bakery, always busy and crowded with a big family enlisted to help. There's a swell in her belly, pushing and kicking and safe from harm. There's softness in her limbs; hard, lean muscles turned to more something comfortable, and her husband does all the heavy lifting. Everything is cozy and dry, and the smell of baking bread and pastries hangs in the air, warm and soft and buttery. Nothing is hard or sharp or an apocalypse.

(Artemis waves the penultimate cookie, wafting the scent through the air, and informs Megan that it's a great loss to the profession.)

(She doesn't waste time telling Megan that it might still happen, and Megan doesn't bother pretend it's anything more than a dream for another life.)

Whatever Megan has done to her hair thuds heavily against her back when she finishes tying it with one last elastic. Artemis doesn't have a mirror, so she'll have go down to the bathrooms if she wants see it. It feels elaborate, and it took a long time.

She doesn't hear it immediately. Maybe it's quieter here, or maybe it's not as loud as she remembers. (Or maybe it's the permanent hearing damage she suffered.)

But it's blaring, red lights flashing and ringing in her ears like the end of the world and maybe it finally is. (Artemis isn't going to miss for the world.)

Kaiju Attack.

Artemis jumps to her feet, and turns around to haul Megan up. There's no time to waste, and even if Artemis can't be deployed (and she's not so sure she can't be, she can last ten minutes in a Jaeger solo, if needs be), she's determined not to be completely useless on drop days.

(Or on any other days.)

It's chaos, and it feels familiar to be running to central command to see who's getting suited up and who waiting behind like a sailor's wife. (The image is a little dated, but you get the idea.)

They run to the control centre, everyone is rushing around them, ducking and dodging and managing somehow not to bowl each other over. Shoulders thud against each other, but the truth is that no bothers to care. (No one has time to watch where they are going.)

Artemis and Megan arrive at central command just after Zatanna and Zatara. Artemis thinks they've the last arrive, until Wally skids to a stop next to her. Bruce is shouting out orders, and Artemis, in a habit she thought she'd broken long ago, snaps to rigid attention.

The Kaiju is Category 4, designation; Daggerback. Artemis sometimes hates the names they give the Kaiju, she wishes it was some kind of alpha-numerical system, so that people wouldn't personify them as much.

(But it would be harder to remember which was which.)

Artemis would've been bouncing on the balls of her feet ready to go, ready to fight, ready to just kick some serious ass, but everyone here looks resigned, and battle-worn. (Which doesn't make any sense, seeing as her record was only just broken.) It's grim, as Bruce wheels around and demands that Megan and Conner suit up, along with _Doctor Fate._

 _Doctor Fate_ will be patrolling the coastline against any nasty surprises (Dick has predicted that a double event will occur in sometime between now and the end of the year, despite L'gann scoffing that that the next stage in the Kaiju progression is flight. Kaiju evolution patterns and Breach dilations and Category Developments are erratic at best, nay on impossible to pin down, and Bruce isn't taking any chances.) while _Martian Manhunter_ takes point.

Conner scratches behind Wolf's ears and orders him to stay. Then they are gone, jogging to their docking stations. Artemis is at a loss for what to do, she used to know, she used to have an unofficial post on drop days, whether or not _Tempest_ was deployed.

She'll find a space then. The King is standing with Bruce, as an equal, Wally drops into a wheelie chair and spins into place at an unused monitor and it boots up. (Not fast enough, not nearly fast enough.) Artemis leans in over his shoulder, and he glances up at her before turning his focus to grimly logging in.

L'gann is furiously flipping through the satellite images they've managed to get of the beastie, fresh out of the Breach and heading their way. He's muttering to himself, trying to piece together enough information that _Manhunter_ won't be going in blind, anything he can about blindspots and chinks in armour. There's less weaknesses to exploit every time, like they don't make the same mistake twice. Like whatever homeworld dimension they've crawled out of somehow know that they are here.

Dick is hacking, breaking laws left, right and centre to point everything he can at the beastie, to squeeze that much more info out of the void. Artemis isn't sure how much of it is actually hacking and how much of it is security systems everywhere turning a blind end to whatever trail he might be leading. He can't dredge up much, and he's running a programme to compare what features they have logged already to what they are about to become familiar with. (Spindlespine and Ivo Ryuu are two Artemis immediately plucks from her own memory, clambering over the table to manually input them into the running programme. Dick splutters as she leans over him, but L'gann makes a grateful noise in the back of his throat.)

There's a dozen larger monitors overhead, one flashes green to signal that Megan and Conner's Neural Handshake has succeeded, and Zatanna and Zatara soon follow. They're Drifting. (Artemis remembers how much she pretended not to know about Jade especially re; her sex life and vice versa. She can't imagine Drifting with her Dad, not that she thinks she could. If he's not dead, he'll certainly be damn hard to find for such an attempt.)

Wally pulls up another programme, explaining to her that from here he can divert power from one part to another, should it be needed. The rest of them, busy and frantic and more than one of them swigging long drafts from dollar store brand Coca-Cola knock-offs. They shudder each time, like you do after a particularly strange shot. They monitor everything from the pilot's heart rate to the rainfall outside.

(Rainfall is no joke, water's heavy stuff and a Jaeger doesn't need to be carting around any more weight than it has to.)

More of the overhead monitors flicker to life as various observation cameras, the 'eyes of the Jaegers' connect. One of them displays the feed from the helicopter, hovering as close as the pilot dares. A number of others display news channels, but those ones are always, always running. (There are some blank ones still, crackling with static as they try frantically to connect with the docked Jaegers.)

She drags a chair over, it squeals against the ground and she perches on it, ready to run (somewhere, anywhere) if needs be. Wolf pads over beside her, breaking Conner's command to rest his head heavily on her thigh. She's hovering right over Wally's shoulder, watching his fingers fly over the keyboard.

Bruce is watching everything at once, barking orders down the line to the pilots, words of encouragement in harsh tones. _Doctor Fate_ hits the water, then _Martian_ _Manhunter_ , and everything falls into deadly stillness. Artemis drums her finger against the hard moulded plastic of the chair, and the sharp tapping of her blunt nails is the loudest sound in central command.

Daggerback tears through the water, the plates (sharp bony triangles, splitting the thick skin so that the blue blood trickles between the gaps in his armour) aligned in neat rows on his back cutting through the surf. He roars, a battle cry that echoes, distorted by no less powerful, through the microphones.

 _Martian Manhunter_ lowers himself, crouching slightly, ready to fight tooth and nail. Not that he has any teeth. He doesn't even really have much of a head. The Mark I cockpits are integrated, non-removable pieces of hardware, right in the heart of the machine.

They circle each other cautiously, nearly all the Kaiju are smart now, smart and getting smarter. But it isn't the same advantage it once was; the intelligent gleam in their eyes is unsettling, but not surprising. (The removal of that one element of surprise isn't much of a comfort; Artemis would still rather that they were stupid.) It doesn't like either of them are going to make any moves towards the other, until they do.

Daggerback is fast, faster than anything that big has any right to be, bunching and curling and leaping and Wally's fingers are flying over the keys, redirecting power to where it's most needed. _Manhunter_ makes a plus shaped cross block over his chest (his defensive style is all about protecting his torso, as the stumpy sunken in head is mostly for show) his lankier arms holding strong.

 _Manhunter_ is forced back but he manages to free one hand enough to sink his fist deep into Daggerback's vulnerable stomach. The beastie squawks, a comical, strangled noise. Artemis snorts, and Wally finds a second to stare at her before going back to work.

They break apart, circling again, and Daggerback roars-

 _-It's throbbing through her ears ringing and head spinning and gone gone and gone and lost and gone all on her own the loudest sound she can imagine and screaming screaming roaring thunderlightningveryveryfrightening alone alone burning ringingscreamingscreamingscreaming all alone littlegirlallalone fighting winninglosingdying gonegonegone burning_ _burningburningburning_ _gasping gasping breathe breathe need to-_

Wally is staring at her, like he's expecting an answer.

"'M fine," Artemis insists, more than likely lying (to Wally, to herself, to everyone.). She turns his head back to the screen and looks back up at the monitors, focusing intently. She pinches the soft, faded fabric of her shirt sleeve between her fingers, rubbing it between them. (The material is nearly worn through in this spot.) She is here, and she needs to stay here.

(You don't learn anything from the past by reliving it.)

Daggerback bunches again, ready to spring. _Martian_ _Manhunter_ braces himself for it, digging his heels into the seafloor.

The beastie explodes, the bony plates launched forward and tearing deep rents in _Manhunter's_ armour. Wally's monitor glows, all the compromised power pathways lighting up. A collective gasp rises in central command, this is unprecedented. Dick punches L'gann, the hard smack echoing.

Zatara and Zatanna's voices crackle to life over the comm, insisting that they are going to help. Bruce orders them to hold the lines, but they start walking anyway, halting until Megan's voice rings clear, steel sharp. She and Conner have this.

 _Doctor Fate_ needs to hold position.

They've got this.

New, replacement plates are slowly pushing up through the shredded remains of Daggerback's back.

They glow faintly blue and look soft for the time being. _Martian Manhunter_ moves fast, as fast as he can(not very), swinging in from right, using his momentum to land a solid right cross to the beastie, following it up with a series of fast left and right jabs, ( _one-two-three-four, one-two-three-four_ ) pushing the beastie back, towards the Breach, back to where he will not cross the Miracle Mile.

It doesn't matter how badly the Kaiju are beaten, they won't stop until they're dead. No surrender, and no retreat and all the bullshit.

The jabs are slower than they should be, and Wally is rerouting currents as fast as he can, getting the power from the nuclear core to exactly where it needs to be. Quickly. Artemis leans up, scrambling over them to Bruce's side to… What exactly?

The plates are re-growing faster than she'd imagined possible, bony sharp plates sprouting like weeds, and _Manhunter_ has taken too much damage. He's slowing down and he packs less of a punch and he's too slow and Daggerback is too fast and Artemis's vision is blurred and crystal clear all at the same the same time and her voice is hoarse when she screams, cutting over and across and contradicting Bruce.

He looks down at her, unreadable. She's not paying attention, barking out orders in his stead, yelling at _Manhunter_ to move, to counter offense, to move, to slip left but they aren't fast enough. (Electricity is sparking, flashing and leaping, in the tears in his armour.)

Move, move, _move_.

Daggerback swings, hand curled into a fist, striking in too fast jabs he's learned from _Manhunter._ ( _One-two-three-four, one-two-three-four._ )

 _Doctor Fate_ needs to go to their aid.

(Now.)

Right cross.

(Faster.)

 _Manhunter_ goes reeling.

(Not fast enough.)

 _Manhunter_ launches the chest missiles.

(Hurry.)

Daggerback blocks, a plus shaped cross block, and bellows when the missiles explode against the bony armour on his forearms.

(Please.)

Daggerback swings in, and uppercut that punches right through _Manhunter's_ heart, right through the cockpit.

Artemis knows what the damp tracks running down her cheeks are now, but she ignores them. Wolf starts howling, whining and she wants to tell him to shut up a minute, she needs to think.

 _Doctor Fate_ boxes. Many Jaegers did, but Daggerback knows how to box now.

And the pilots have never encountered a Kaiju who could learn. Evolve, sure, adapt, no. (Guess there's a first time for everything.)

Daggerback is moving fast towards the shoreline, and Artemis snaps, with all the authority of literally no one behind her, that _Poseidon_ better go suit up because this might go south fast if they can't outbox this beastie. (They should be able to, he's learning, but he's still an amateur. She could take him. If he wasn't…)

Bruce might be affirming her orders in the background somewhere, but it seems more like he's resigned himself to the role of spectator, observer (it seems like he wants to see where this might go). He'll step in if she fucks up big time, but seeing as the world is fucked up big time, how far wrong can she really go? (Really, really wrong. There's a lot at stake here.)

She turns back to the comm mic, and takes a breath, levelling her voice. (She tucks anything that might be considered an emotion into the back of her head, where she can either ignore it forever or call it back when it might be useful. She's good at that.) She presses the two halves of the comm button, and starts talking to _Doctor Fate._ Zatanna sounds a little choked up, but Artemis's voice cuts through her emotion, clear and cool. They have to take this sonuvabitch down. L'gann looks like her might want to mutter something about them being clones and therefore the issue of mothers might not be quite as clear cut as her colourful language implies.

He doesn't though, probably because Dick elbows him before it can occur to him that it might not be the time or place for technicalities.

Dropping the comm line, Artemis turns to Wally.

"Wally, get me _Doctor Fate's_ specs."

"Done."

She leans up, tapping her finger against the monitor she wants them on. It crackles to life, filled with all the info she could need on what exactly Zatanna and Zatara are packing, from an arm cannon to the flare guns.

Everyone is quietly focused, except Wolf, whose long, low, mournful howls make Artemis want to scrub at the salty streaks left behind by her tears.

Wally's being too quiet, too direct and efficient with his words, and she's already forgotten how to think without having to tune him out. She's never had to think about how to win a fight surrounded by silence, there's always been Bruce yelling in her ear and Jade's snide comments and sharp remarks. (Even that last fight, the only time she was on her own, it wasn't quiet. Every part of her was screaming.)

"Talk to me West," Artemis orders. "Anything. Anything at all."

She hopes she won't regret that decision, because he's never going to shut up ever again.

 _Doctor Fate_ is faster than _Manhunter_ , hell, he's the fastest Jaeger ever built, and Artemis says a quick prayer to the ten thousand Hindu gods (she doesn't believe, or practise any kind of religion, but seeing as she's praying, she might as well go for the one that has gods to spare. And for some reason, it's the only major world religion that doesn't have a sect that believes their gods sent the Kaiju as punishment. So there's that.) and promises them she'll learn to say at least three of their names right.

Artemis holds firm in her orders for them to stay where they are until the beastie is within spitting distance. Artemis knows that that's too close for the city's comfort, but she also knows that they need it not to know just how fast the good _Doctor_ can be. (She's praying, praying ardently. Ten thousand gods' ears are burning.)

 _Doctor Fate_ braces himself, digging his heels into the silt at the bottom of the bay. He leaves himself wide open, ready to catch and grapple with Daggerback, because if there's one thing a kaiju never does, it's avoid a tussle with a Jaeger. (They come through the Breach spoiling for a fight, all too eager for death and destruction.)

Artemis hears the golden metal plating buckling over the comms when Daggerback smashes into _Doctor Fate_. It's a familiar sound, and not necessarily a bad one. (Admitted, this is probably not one of those times.)

She can hear herself giving orders before she thought she had a strategy. Whatever her plan is, it makes sense so far, aiming for the soft, vulnerable underbelly and the clinks in Daggerback's armour that his pooling blood has revealed. He's learning fast.

The bony plates on his back, they stand sharp and hard and fully reformed.

Artemis grits her teeth at the collective wince that central command release when Daggerback's fist sinks deep into _Doctor Fate's_ belly. She can't afford to feel sympathy right now. (She can't afford to feel anything anymore, but especially not right now.) Artemis barks at them to walk it off.

 _Doctor Fate_ is getting into the swing of things now, and she can afford ease off on the orders, but doesn't relax. Every part of her feels wound too tight. She watches with a critical eye she didn't know she had, but she knows where it came from. (She doesn't have much she can thank her Dad for, but… she is who she is, and he had a big hand in creating that. Not that he deserves anything resembling gratitude.)

She warns them not to go for the head. Daggerback might twig it on his own, but in the meantime… well. In the meantime it's best not to give him any ideas.

 _Doctor Fate_ gets a good grip around the beasties throat. (Artemis doesn't know if or how the Kaiju breathe, but holding them by the throat doesn't serve to much end other than getting their teeth at arms' length.) This is it. They need to end this, and that's what they do. They squeeze his throat, gold fingers tearing into the soft flesh of his through and being stained with the beastie's glowing blood, the blue illuminating the crushing hold the good _Doctor_ has.

 _Doctor Fate_ 's arm cannon digs deep into Daggerback's gut, and they fire, once, twice, thrice and – Daggerback rips himself apart in a vain, final attempt to clear a path from those who will follow him. Shards of bone and bony plates slice through the air, embedding themselves deep in _Doctor Fate's_ golden skin.

What's left of the beastie collapses in on itself, boneless, crashing into the sea. Not that there's a whole lot left to do so, but his blood folds in with the surf, the waves breaking Kaiju Blue.

(The Kaiju are an ecological disaster and Armageddon rolled into one.)

Zatanna screams, but it just serves as proof that she's alive, alive and in pain, but alive.

She follows it with a string of curses and Artemis can hear Zatara unstrapping and rushing to his daughter's side. (She'll be okay, if it didn't kill her right away, it'll take a lot more than that to take down a Jaeger pilot.)

(Artemis has seen too many times exactly how much it takes to kill a Jaeger pilot.)

Artemis sighs, her shoulders dropping. She should let Bruce take it from here, but instead she's the one who calls the order for the choppers to go pick up _Doctor Fate_ and what's left of _Martian_ _Manhunter_.

She doesn't know what's supposed to happen next (probably a lot more bureaucracy and paperwork than you imagine associated with giant robots fighting giant monsters, and at least one speech to rally the troops) but she knows that she isn't… She's not doing it. Any of it. She's done. For today, she's done.

She rubs at the knots in her shoulders half-heartedly. If the end of the world doesn't kill her, stress will. Wolf noses at her hand, wet and cold and sharp. She scratches behind his ears and he leans heavily against her leg. (It's hard to walk like that, until she leans right back.) She needs to go.

Bruce doesn't stop her, no one does. In fact a path clears in front of her where everyone is gathering to hear Bruce make a speech about… Something. He'll inspire them in fifty words or less. (He'll be honest too, which is even worse.) A chair scrapes sharply across the metal floor, as someone gets up to follow her. The sound echoes when someone else starts to think it's a good idea.

(It's a terrible idea.)

(Artemis might have to gouge the eyes out of any witnesses to her… moment of weakness.)

(Not that she's having a 'moment of weakness.')

(She's just tired.)

In the end, just one person(and one dog) follows her out of command central, his trainers squeaking across the floor like their still brand new. (They aren't. They're old and tattered, and Artemis isn't sure what colour they were supposed to be, but they aren't it anymore.)

It's Wally.

(Of course it's fucking Wally.)

"There wasn't anything you could do."

(And that's the fucking problem, isn't it, wise guy?)

Artemis shoots a glare over her shoulder, her hand fisting into the soft thick fur of Wolf's mane. (who's supposed to take care of him?) Wally falters under the force of her glare, looking like he's only just realised why exactly that wasn't the right thing to say. He looks for something else to say, because he doesn't appreciate the value of silence. (Artemis isn't sure if she wants him to talk or shut up, but the idea of being left alone doesn't even cross her mind.)

(Also, she's worried that Wolf might follow him if he goes, and call her selfish, but she doesn't want that.)

"Uh, listen, you did your best in there, and it didn't save everyone – I mean, uh, you Doctor Fate wouldn't have taken down Daggerback without you in their ear," Wally's floundering, but there's something reassuring buried under all that, so Artemis starts listening. "None of us were prepared for a Kaiju to… to whatever that was, we weren't prepared for it."

His hand is stupidly large and heavy where it falls on her shoulder, squeezing reassuringly. Artemis doesn't acknowledge the contact, or that it startled her, but she's still not used to how warm people can be. It nearly burns.

(Everything is too hot after Alaska and the Wall and fingers so numb it was like an illusion of warmth.)

She shrugs out of his touch and marches away, Wolf following in her wake.

Wally doesn't follow, and she doesn't look back, but he probably looks dejected.

(She doesn't know how she feels about that.)

(She doesn't know how she feels about anything.)

Wolf does follow though, and she can hear him padding mournfully along beside her while her braid (over eager and complicated and no doubt beautiful) sways like a pendulum between her shoulders while she walks. She rests a hand in Wolf's mane as they walk, his fur is thick and soft, strangely grounding in quality, and he's never going to understand why he won't see Megan and Conner again.

(Well, she's not sure about that, he might already know something, but she's not sure what it is exactly he knows.)

She doesn't acknowledge anyone as she walks to the dorms, (her gait is robotic, and stiff, because she can't quite seem to remember how exactly to walk) Wolf at her side, leaning into her leg while she tries to remember how she's supposed to save anyone.

Megan and Conner's door is ajar.

(Before, it would already have been in the process of being emptied – space was once at a premium, and pilots weren't dropping like flies. Everything was getting bigger and better and more; the funding, the Jaegers, the kaiju.)

(One of those still is, but she doubts that the Jaeger Programme can even afford to ship their belongings to their next of kin.)

Artemis hauls it open, and steps inside, Wolf pushes in past her, and the heavy weight of the door swings slowly, to the same almost-shut state as before, catching on the uneven flooring. She's just here to get some stuff. Dog stuff. She's not here to look around.

(But she does.)

Their space is much homely than hers, in an almost surreal way. It's like Megan and Conner carved themselves a corner of suburbia (well, Artemis isn't sure on the specifics, but it looks like nothing she's ever seen before, you know, in reality). It's bigger than her room too, and carpeted.

(She doesn't know where to begin looking.)

She scrapes her boots on the welcome mat and toes them off, padding across the floor for a closer look at everything. The table has been transformed into some kind of crafting station, with a sewing machine and neatly organized everything under a corkboard. Artemis doesn't want to look too closely, but those might be scrapbooking supplies. The alcove that was intended as a set of bunk beds, is a reading nook and well-designed storage now.

Artemis laughs, choking on the strange sound. They have a 'live, laugh, love' decoration over their bed. (It's handmade, and modified to include the word 'lacerate', but still.)

There's a handmade quilt on the queen sized bed and a pile of well-co-ordinated throw pillows, and all the photos are either neatly framed or carefully collaged together, unlike Artemis's wall of memories. Some of the photos are of Megan, with hair trailing past her collarbone, almost lost in a crowd of identical sisters, and some of Conner, with an older brother, and a set of older parents. Most of the photos are of them though, as high school sweethearts, and as police partners and Jaeger pilots and as patients, heads gleaming.

(Megan's tattoos continue onto her scalp.)

They were supposed to update Manhunter, not doom two people to the same fate as their predecessors. They should've - why wasn't the radiation shielding updated?

(They must have known. They had to have known.)

(Did they know?)

Artemis pushes everything to the back of her mind in order to focus on the task at hand. There's a huge dog basket in the corner, and she piles everything that looks like it might be Wolf's into it. The dishes on the floor, the half full sack of food, the dog collar that may have been a belt in a previous life and the leash.

She turns to go, facing the door that closed behind her. There's a mirror on the back of their door, polished to crystal clear with battery powered fairy lights draped artfully around the edge.

(Artemis looks ridiculous framed in girlish, twinkling lights, harder and sharper and deadly and tired, tear tracks traced down in hollow cheeks. Her cheek bones look knife sharp and she looks older than she remembered. She feels older than she remembered.)

Her hair looks great though, coiffed and braided, intricately pulled back from her face. She looks like a fierce blonde Amazon, someone to swerve around when you see them walking down the street.

She doesn't like someone who'd turn their back on anything.

She drops the basket and crosses the floor.

(She doesn't know whose laptop exactly it is, but as a former police officer and Jaeger pilot who no doubt had access to important government documents and a link to the Cave's wifi, they should really have a more secure password than 'password'.)

Megan and Conner smile up at her, happy and hopeful (it's an old photo, must be) as she pulls up file after file. The laptop is old and slow, crammed full of photos and videos and well organized documentation of their entire lives.

(Did they know?)

Wolf settles mournfully on the floor beside her, too well trained to clamber into the reading nook beside her.

(She needs to know.)

It's early the next day when Artemis gets back to her quarters to go to sleep, setting the dog basket on the floor and taking everything she took from Megan and Conner's home out of it. She tips everything out, combing her fingers through her braid in order to free her hair in order to think.

(When her hair falls loose around her shoulders, something constricts in her chest, painfully. The air is squeezed out of her lungs all at once, and it takes a long minute to catch her breath, and Wolf stares up at her the entire time.)

She stretches the tie between her fingers a few times, before wrapping it around her Eden Tempest action figure's leg.

The dog food goes heaped in the corner and the dishes are set beside the door. She weighs the laptop in her hand before standing on her toes to shove it up out of the way, into the dark recess of the top bunk.

(It thuds worryingly against the back wall.)

She tugs her violin free, (it's too late to bother trying to sleep anyway) and pats the space beside her persistently until Wolf clambers up onto the thin mattress beside her. (Her dog is allowed on her bed. Wolf is her dog.) She checks the tuning on her violin, slowly and methodically, patiently plucking each string to carefully discern the dull notes.

Wolf's ears prick at the unfamiliar sounds, but he doesn't move his head from where it rests heavily on her thigh.

Then she starts to play, her fingers stumbling through the almost forgotten motions, unsteady gossamer notes quavering uncertainly in the air before giving way to bolder tones and sharp, harder sounds.

(She plays until her arms ache and her eyes blur and everything seems far away.)

* * *

 **While reading this, I noticed that I mixed up Zatanna and Zatara a lot, so I think've fixed most of it, but I'm going to go back and check the last chapter for similar mistakes aswell - I made some minor edits to the first chapter too, if you want to check them out.**

 **Please R &R.**


	4. Now III

**Am I a year late and hyped for all the news about the source material for this fic? HECK YEAH I AM. Am I the creator of said source material? HECK NO I AM NOT.**

* * *

 **Now III**

* * *

A heavy silence hangs over breakfast, broken only by the scraping of cutlery across the plates. Wolf pads alongside her, and everyone stares at her.

(She can tell they are staring, due to the change in silence.)

There are dark bags under her eyes, but she solves that by filling the largest mug she can with strong, black coffee. She grinds some sea salt into the mug, an old trick that's supposed to make it less bitter without adding sugar or milk (she's just a little lactose intolerant, but not enough that she won't eat some of her favourite foods because of the presence of dairy), and she doesn't know if it really works, but it's how she takes her coffee.

She slides up to fill the conspicuous gap on the bench.

(She doesn't eat anything, preferring to feel the full effects of her caffeine on an empty stomach today.)

Everyone is slumped over their breakfast, barring Zatanna, whose posture is proudly impeccable, her jaw cutting a defiant line, daring anyone to ask her if she's alright. (It's as plain as the nose on her face that she isn't.) Her heavy, plaster cast encased arm is bound up in a fashionable, floaty scarf turned sling, and while one eye is almost lost in a swell of purple bruising; the other is rimmed in liquid eyeliner, flicking out into a deadly, precisely fine pointed wing. She stabs at her eggs moodily.

(She can't pilot with her arm like that, which is enough to make anyone moody, especially after such a bitter victory. So not only is _Manhunter_ down, _Doctor Fate_ won't be going anywhere fast.)

Zatana is seething, and the cocktail of emotions she is feeling is almost tangible. Until her arm is recovered, Bruce will be drifting with her father. (Artemis can only read the tip of the iceberg, but she doesn't want him to drift without her, doesn't want him to fight by the side of someone she cannot fully trust with her father's life, because that's what Bruce does - he risks all of their lives to fight this fight.)

(There is guilt too, an undercurrent of guilt running under the depth of sadness felt by everyone at the table.)

Artemis doesn't do something reasonable and depressing like bringing up the fact they don't have enough Jaegers and pilot teams to cover for them if a Kaiju comes through the breach, and at the rate they're coming, there'll be another one up through the breach in a matter of weeks. Maybe even sooner.

It's still too much for them to deal with.

Dick(his jaw is wired tight, clenched against any words that might spill out) and L'gann aren't even arguing about their respective fields, and Artemis pretends not to notice Wally slipping his bacon under the table to Wolf, his cavernous appetite seemingly vanished. Wolf eats it, which is more than Artemis can say about the portion of food she tipped into his bowl before heading to the canteen.

As much as they drag their feet and stretch their breakfast, the kaiju won't take a day off, so neither can they. They all break apart into chunks, heading to where they are supposed to be, except for Wolf(who doesn't have anywhere to be) and Wally(who has). They both follow her like lost puppies, which a quality that is much more endearing in a dog.

Artemis feels a familiar hollow in her chest. (Which, she guesses, is better than a familiar ache.)

She makes her way to the training area, where Bruce will decree his verdict.

(Whatever he decides, she can make it work.)

(She has to make it work.)

She looks straight ahead, putting one foot in front of the other and pretending like she isn't hyper aware of exactly where Wolf and Wally are. Her jaw feels wired shut, her teeth crushed together.

The door to the training area is heavy, and it squeals in protest when she hauls it open, walking in meet Bruce's level gaze. If he notices her entourage (and he almost certainly does, because Artemis can't imagine anything escaping Bruce's notice) he doesn't comment on it, even when Wally ducks away and Wolf sits at her feet.

Artemis snaps her heels together and corrects her posture.

Bruce's eyes are blue. This is something she has always known on one level, a fact that she has archived away somewhere in the recesses of her mind along with so many other things. Today is different though. Artemis has always found Bruce to be inscrutable, a puzzle she had long since resigned herself to never solving, to taking out and chipping away at on rainy days when there was nothing to do.

But today there is one thing clearly written in his eyes, and maybe because it is mirrored in her own that she can finally see it.

They are not going to lose everything to some beasties who crawled out of a hole in space-time.

(They are not going out with a bang, they are going to win this, wild and desperate and stupid and really, really recklessly.)

Bruce looks at her when he speaks, but it's clear that his words are for the benefit of all present, the small crowd that had dared to gather. Something pushes out against her chest, and Artemis takes a handful of deep, discreet breaths.

As they are now, none of the candidates are suitable, or anywhere close to drift compatible with her. This she knew, (in fact it was pretty clear that this was something everyone knew,) but the next thing Bruce says takes her by surprise, takes everyone by surprise.

Bruce has chosen ten candidates to study under the newly formed Academy Of Ass-Kicking. (He doesn't call it that, but Artemis can hear Jade's voice, the twisted sneer of it as she snorts at the absurdity of the plan. She'd've gone though, leaning back in a comfortable chair she dragged up from somewhere, yelling from the sidelines and thumbing through a worn Harlequin paperback.)

She can deal with this, she can train them up to suit how she fights. She can do that.

(Probably.)

It's all they've got, so it'll have to work, or else they so far past the deep end that's they'll want to start evolving some gills. She nods and calls her brand new students to attention. They all look younger than her, and they are young enough that that makes a difference in how they will treat her.

(They look fresher than her too, greener and cleaner and younger than she ever remembers being.)

She gets a list of their names from Bruce, but her head is already so filled with the people she has met since coming here that she imagines that they will just have to get used to her calling them anything other than name their mother gave them. She remembers the fights though, and each of them favoured a different style. They are all men, young and brazen and cocksure, despite the fact that they all ate mat, and ate it hard yesterday.

They forget all too quickly what it is like to lose, and that is already a mark against them.

Still, they are eager to learn all the ways in which she can kick their ass, so there may be something in that alone.

She feels like telling them to come back tomorrow, that she's not ready.

(She wants to alternate between sleeping and hugging what has quickly become her dog)

But she doesn't.

She barks at them sharply, telling them to get into pairs (it doesn't matter who they partner with, the end goal is one of them partnering with her) and hauling Wally back by the collar when he tries to leave. She knows he had a hand in this, possibly the worst idea she's ever heard of, but also the only idea that might work. Anyway, if she has to teach this crowd of overeager students, he has to be her punching bag.

That's the deal she's striking with the Powers That Be.

(He doesn't have anything else to do anyway, they're still salvaging _Manhunter_ –it'll be in in a few hours - and _Doctor Fate_ doesn't need any major work.)

(There's no real reason for him to be a permanent member of staff, yet here he is.)

She tells them to keep their eyes on her and Wally. They snicker, and Artemis rolls her eyes. There arrogance will cost them dearly before they outgrow it.

She nods at Wally, who doesn't do anything.

(Of course not. He's a squint.)

She sighs, heavily. This is going to be an uphill battle and then some.

"Attack me."

"Huh? No!"

She glowers at him.

"Alright! Okay… just a little."

He charges at her, faster than she expected, blindly going for some kind of tackle.

She steps to the side, swiping his feet out from under him and then expediting his introduction to the floor by sharply driving her elbow into his shoulder. (Not enough to hurt him, just enough to teach a lesson.) He groans from where he ends up on the floor.

She hauls him up, and the advice she gives him is meant for her brand new student body.

"There's only two things that really matter in a fight – how much you want to win and how much the other guy wants to win," she gives him a cursory glance up-and-down to make sure she hasn't permanently incapacitated him.

Artemis slowly goes through what he did wrong, and teaches him to throw an punch. She doesn't spend much time on it, but he catches on pretty quickly, even though it's like getting him by a kitten. He's pulling it, though, so maybe there's hope for him in the face of something he actually wants to punch.

(She makes a mental note to watch whether her class is pulling their punches, it's a form of hesitancy that she can't afford.)

She instructs her charges to teach their partner one move from their respective discipline. Artemis moves between the pairs her feet stalking lightly through the spaces between. She doesn't tell Wally to leave, even though she has no further use for him today.

Having completed her circuit, and satisfied that everyone has been thrown suitably out of their comfort zone enough to change something, she turns back to face the class and sets a brawl in motion. Artemis doesn't tell them to stay in their pairs, so none of them do.

(It's a lesson that they will have to learn on their own. She can't teach someone to watch their partners back, and she isn't interested in anyone that has to be told.)

The victor apparent is Jason Todd.

(Artemis doesn't know if he's expecting praise but she's certainly not giving it.)

She dismisses the class, not bothering to remind them to warm down or stretch. She's not going to coddle them.

(She doesn't want them to die for her either though.)

The drift out, conversing and complaining and shit talking each other. They are competitors after all.

In the end, it's just her and her dog, who sidles up to her and licks her hand. She scratches behind Wolf's ears.

And Wally.

(He's been playing solitaire on his phone ever since she didn't dismiss him.)

(What are they paying him? It's probably too much and not enough all at the same time.)

She follows him to the Research and Development Dept, staying ahead of him so that it doesn't seem like she's following him, but she doesn't really have anywhere else to go or any other duties. He takes a phone call en route and informs her _Manhunter_ should be back soon, along with… whatever's left of Conner and Megan.

(They never found Jade, and the public spectacle of burying an empty coffin with her name on it is something Artemis never wants anyone to go through.)

Connor and Megan both wanted to be cremated; if possible, something Artemis learned when she decided to grossly invade their privacy. Those in the fight against the Kaiju rarely wish for open coffin ceremonies. The funeral will be a small affair, family only and the police officers from the precinct, donations if desired to the Jaeger Programme, the thing that ushered them to their deaths.

There won't be any news cameras, and there will be a cursory mention of the death on local radio, if it is mentioned anywhere. The world will hear only that the line of defence is weakened further still, and they will go on with their lives because they take it for granted that they will be safe always, that the Jaegers and the Wall will protect them from any and all harm.

Wally takes a seat and pulls his keyboard towards him, accessing the server archives (his password is a reference to an old TV show) and transferring both the original and revised blue prints of _Martian Manhunter_ to his tablet. The case is bright red, struck through with a yellow lightning bolt graphic. Artemis guesses it's in reference to a cartoon or a comic of some sort, but she can't be sure.

She can't hear L'gann and Dick arguing in the background. They both seem to be avoiding each other in the interest of maintaining the stillness of mourning. Artemis wishes they wouldn't. It would be better to pretend like everything is normal, because to an extent it is.

(People die in the first line of defence and, these days, they die often. This should roll off them like water on a duck's back but it doesn't and it hurts.)

Instead they are quietly working and quietly ignoring each other, acting like they are too wrapped up in their own work to bother with each other with anything. It's unnerving and unnatural.

She shakes her hair loose from her ponytail and runs a hand through it, catching on tangles, and leans over Wally's shoulder to read the information scrolling down his tablet. He gets intermittent twitter notifications as well.

His phone buzzes after a few minutes (a few hours?) spent in companionable silence. _Manhunter_ is back.

Artemis stands out of his way as he scrambles to his feet, sending the chair spinning back into the abandoned workstations behind it. It cracks loudly and Artemis can hear both Dick and L'gann's reaction to the sudden noise. (L'gann drops something and swears, Dick stops typing to look around.)

Even though Wally is in a hurry to see _Manhunter's_ condition for himself, he waits, bouncing his leg while Wolf stretches and yawns, displaying his long, sharp teeth.

He practically breaks into a sprint when Artemis pushes upright from where she was leaning against the table. She ties her hair back up as she walks, letting him lead the way while Wolf trots beside her, pushing his head into her thigh until she twines her fingers into the thick fur of his mane.

(This fierce dog that she supposes is hers, is needy.)

Wally buzzes with nervous energy, his chattering voice the only thing that feels normal. It is surprising how quickly she has come to accept his motormouth as part of the consistent laws of the universe, (water is wet, for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction, Wally West never shuts up) not that there are many of those any more.

The first thing that catches Artemis's eye when she enters the hanger, is _Manhunter._ The downed giant has had his heart punched out, his skin shredded and ripping into huge rents even Artemis can see there's not much here to be saved. _Manhunter_ was annihilated.

(Artemis chokes down the bile rising in her throat, blinks away the tears starting to burn in her eyes.)

Wolf yelps, and Artemis lets go of the fur she'd pulled too harshly like it burns. He disappears from her side.

Wally squeezes her shoulder once before striding over to take a closer look at the wreckage of _Manhunter_. Artemis takes a couple of deep breaths before she follows him over. She tells Wolf to stay put, and he curls in on himself mournfully, pushing his face into the hollow of his hip. She doesn't think he should follow her into the canyon of _Manhunter's_ heart.

Wally starts at the feet and moves up through the body, slowly and meticulously recording everything he sees into his tablet. Artemis leaves him to it as she scales the fallen god to reach the cavity that once held his core.

(The hole looked clean, almost neat when she entered the hangar, a neat puncture admit all the rough tears and rents. Up close it is painful to look at, as she stands over the place Conner and Megan died. The edges are rough and torn, sharp and stained with dried Kaiju blood.)

One of the knife-like shards of metal shreds through the sleeve of her jacket, slices through her skin, as she climbs down to the hangar floor, visible through Manuhunter's torso. She ignores it. (Kaiju-blue contamination is not something she should ignore, but the treatment for it can wait until she has finished here.) It's her bad arm any way.

The sound of her boots (rubber soles worn to almost nothing) hitting the ground echoes up through the chest. The distance seems farther from here than it did from up there. It's darker down here than she expected, and she's standing in the only circle of light.

This is the first time she has been inside a Jaeger since Jade died.

 _Manhunter_ is silent, and sound of people at work in the hangar is muted and far away.

She was wrong. This isn't _Manhunter's_ core. It's _Manhunter's_ heart – the core is just below her, shut down and completely intact, but definitely not safe to stand near. She stays in her circle of light, fighting the urge to go investigate. (She's already got Kaiju Blue in her bloodstream, what can a powered down reactor do to her?)

Daggerback didn't go for the core, like she thought. She hopes his aim was bad, but the fact is that this points to him aiming for the pilots. It makes sense when she thinks about how he went for _Doctor Fate's_ head, taking Zatanna out of play for the next few weeks. This… well it isn't good.

She sits on the floor, which is damp, like everything else in the Cave. Jaegers don't mean anything without pilots – and apart from those idiots in her brand new training camp, no one wants to be a Jaeger pilot anymore. There's no money in it anymore, and even if there was, how much would someone have to pay you for your almost certain death? Drift compatibility isn't exactly common, either.

Artemis doesn't know if anyone still studies it. There's no funding in it anymore, once the Jaeger Programme went bust. It's complicated, and if she searched, she could find heavy text on it in the Research and Development Dept. There's a million different variables that decide whether or not you can drift with someone.

But, Bruce is stepping up to Drift with Zatara.

(Is it easier if you'd done before? Why could Bruce step up to do it so easily when she couldn't? Why is he able to fill that gap? Why isn't Artemis able to jump back into the Drift with anyone like that? Is it because they were both pilots already? Why hadn't he climbed into Eden Tempest with her? What makes her so special?)

She can hear Wally calling her name, but she doesn't answer. (It's unlikely he'll check the giant crater in the chest cavity anytime soon.) She wants to sit and think for a few minutes more. (Or just sit. She feels heavy, and tired and…)

Someone needs to work. There has to be someone in this world who she can Drift with. If Bruce can do it, how hard can it be? She can find someone. She is not all that unique or special, and there is someone out there with her exact brand of desperate.

"What are you doing in there?" Wally asks. "Holy shit- is that blood? Did you cut yourself?"

He looks like he might try climbing down there to join her, but he's wary of the cut she's inflicted on herself.

"The core's pristine."

Artemis starts to climb out before he can come down to her. It's bad enough that she's going to have to go through Kaiju Blue treatment, but she'd feel really bad if Wally had to do it as well. Her arm hurts when she tries to use it to haul herself up, but she grit her teeth and ignores it. (That arm always aches a little anyway, a phantom wound. Ignoring the fresh, real pain is easy, since she's in the habit of it.) It's hard to catch her breath and keep hold of it.

When she gets close to the top, he reaches down and hauls her out, making sure to pull her up by her good arm. He swears when he sees the injury, and immediately and dramatically strips his labcoat off so he can bunch an unnecessary amount of fabric against her still bleeding arm.

(Wolf is howling and crying and wandering back and fort, confused and searching. Artemis doesn't call him back. He needs to do this. She shouldn't've tried to stop him.)

"It wasn't aiming for the core-" Artemis starts, trying to prevent Wally from getting anywhere near her Kaiju Blue infected wound with his only clean labcoat. (Cleanish. Cleanest.) She grabs his wrist, and holds his jaw, forcing him to make eye-contact. It's hard to keep him in focus. "- Wally, it wasn't aiming for the core. It was aiming for the pilots, Wally. For Megan and Conner."

He stops fighting her, freezing. He doesn't take a minute to process or time to think about this. He files it awful as a problem for another time, and asks the next question.

"You said, the core? Pristine? Are you sure? I could refit-"

"Not a scratch on it," Artemis says. It's hard to keep anything in focus now, and her stomach is turning like she's going to be sick. Wally. You can't use that core. You have to promise me. Make sure no one ever gets in a Jaeger with that – promise me Wally. You have-"

Everything sounds far away, even her own voice, like it's an echo bouncing back from a distant corner. It's hard to breathe, and her legs can't figure out how to hold up her body now that it's so heavy. Her grip on Wally's wrist tightens. She's fine.

For another minute, she's fine.

(Until he promises, she's fine.)

"What are you- did you? Artemis, did you get-"

"Promise me, Wally. The core – don't let anyone near it."

"Okay, alright, I promise – just, can I take you to the infirmary now?"

She feels blurry, like she's being smudged away. Everything feels miles away, and the ground falls out from under her feet. She tries to kick her legs, to move her arms to run to fight to get away to move she can't be here anymore she has to go she can't breathe here it isn't safe she can't- she needs to go it's too dark here why can't she see properly where is she needs to find jade jade knows what to do she needs to save jade they need to leave where's jade where's artemis where's wally –

"I'm right here."

Where? He sounds so far away. She needs to keep Wally safe.

"I've got you, it'll be fine."

That's a lie. Whatever happens next and after that, it won't be fine. Something awful is about to happen and Artemis can't do a thing about it. She can't stop the Kaiju coming through the Breach and she can't save everyone. She can't save anyone because she can't partner up with anyone because she's just the only ArtemisorJade left in the world.

* * *

When she wakes up, she's hooked up to an IV and a refitted dialysis machine. Standard treatment for Kaiju Blue infection, she knows, but it's been a long time since she's been hooked up to them. And she has been hooked up to them a little more than the national average.

According to the time stamp on the readout vs. the wall clock, the dialysis machine finished its cycle just about an hour ago. That's if the machine was in full working order, but it looked suspiciously cobbled together out of parts raided from the dumpster behind the local hospital.

(The wall clock wasn't ticking either.)

She swings her legs out of the infirmary bed, and Wolf yelps indignantly when her heels make contact with his flank. Wally is sitting cross legged on the bed next to her, but he's so focused on his tablet (he's playing some kind of game, Artemis can hear the repeating, looping tune) that he hasn't noticed that she's up and back to her best.

(Mostly. As good as she ever gets.)

She unhooks herself from the dialysis machine, wincing. The IV has to stay in for another while yet, but that's on wheels and she's got shit to do. Probably. She can find something that needs doing. There's always something.

Artemis steps into her well-worn boots and heads for the exit, wheeling her IV stand beside her. She'll leave a note for whoever they have playing doctor. She's just reaching the door when she turns around to yell back at Wally.

"You going to hang around here all day?"

He stumbles, almost falling flat on his face when he tries to catch up to her. It's not particularly funny but it does make her snort.

"You should really rest, you know," he says, but he doesn't try to push the issue. They both know she's not going to listen to him. He falls into step beside her as she walks, fighting with the IV stand when its wheels get caught in the uneven dings and dents in the floor.

(She thinks she should elaborate on the promise she managed to extract earlier, but she doesn't want to talk about it. She never wants to talk about it, and he promised.)

Wolf pads along beside her while they talk.

It's not about anything important. In fact, they both make the distinct effort not to take about anything important. The conversation is wonderfully trivial. (It has been a long time since Artemis has taken the time to talk about something that didn't matter at all.) He makes her laugh in harsh bursts that seem to catch both of them off guard, no matter how often it happens.

He bumps her hip cautiously, and then skips a step out of her reach before she can return the gesture and bruise him.

"Hey, you know…" He formulates his next words carefully, "… I didn't show you any moves?"

"You don't have any moves."

"I've got moves!" He moves in some way that is both graceful and graceless(although that may be because that is something she has taken for granted that he is), ending with a turn and leaning up on his toes in a way that's only possible because of the hard rubber toe caps on his sneakers. She recognises them as somewhat legitimate dance moves, but she's never going to admit to that.

She can humour him though.

"All right Big Shot, show me your moves."

They work through a two step, moving carefully around Artemis's I.V, stand and pressing thmeselves against the wall when Dick skids past. He's looking for them, frantic and baabbling, words tmbing one after the other out of his mouth. (Artemis canbarely keep up, but she can keep up enough to know to follow him.)

She wrenchs the drip out of her arm, and Wally winces, but the pain is nothing, and she has somewhere to be right now. Her I.V. is abandoned, in a hallway somewhere, pulled swiftly out of her arm and leaking fluid. A bruise is already forming in the crook of her elbow. (She's Kaiju blue free enough for now.) The medical team of one aren't going to be happy abut that, but from Dick's rapidfire explanation of the situation, they'll be preocuupied.

Wolf bounds ahead, looking back them as they struggle to keep up.

Kaiju patterns are pretty predictable, almost to the minute, using maths that Artemis doesn't understand. (Dick offered to explain it all once before, his eyes shining like he can't believe she's still listening, and she did her best to understand, but she doesn't. Her GED is not standing up.) He reminds her of this as they run, and offers again, even though they don't have time.

(Where is he getting all that extra air, Artemis can barely listen and run. It's all the years as a labourer, turning against her.)

Dick's maths and the algorithms he coded computers to run have all told him one thing, which he in turn has told everyone. They are on there way to a double event. Two Kaijus through the breach at once, something before deemed imposiible, it would distablise the breach completely. THey wouldn't get through.

No one believed him, least of all, L'gann.

Dick tells them both this as they sprint (Wally is fast, and Artemis is struggling to keep up) though the labyrinthian Cave to the Research and Development Dept. where L'gann has done something really stupid, because he's so eager to prove that his research is more valuable than Dick's and because Dick doesn't know when he's pushed someone over the limit, the line, past the point of reason, they're in a bad situation.

Real bad.

(Wally should've been there to mediate this, to stop this nonsense in it's tracks instead of at her sickbed, this is, it's her fault. It's always her fault, her dumb idea, that gets someone hurt. Killed.)

L'gann may never recover fully from his dumbass decision.

(And that'll be on Artemis too.)

Artemis would punch him if he didn't look like that might actually kill him.

He Drifted with a Kaiju. Not a whole one, they don't have a whole Kaiju, but a barely alive fragment of a four year old Kaiju brain. Just to prove he could. To get approval to try harvest another brain. He didn't even get a clean picture of anything, just a babble of information of how Kaiju's might work, or how they worked four years ago. That's not enough to mean anythng now. His entire body is shaking as he tries to explain what he did maintain to see, and there's a crushed trail of dried blood on his upper lip.

(Bruce is already there, and for some reason that makes Artemis run faster.)

It worked anyway.

(She's too late.)

Bruce said yes. Yes to Drifting with a whole brain, yes to putting his life on the line for a scrap of information.

(Artemis wanted to punch Bruce in the jaw, but she's not sure she's in any position to judge, because she's the one who climbed into a gaping nuclear wound. She's not even sure she'd have made a different call. But she should've been here, here to fight it. If she could've. Would've.)

Artemis doesn't even know where they're supposed to get a different Kaiju brain, until Bruce tells them where they get money to keep up the fight, and how it's so easy to get black market Kaiju product on every street corner in every city in the world. They're held up, propped open by dirty money and a shady backdoor deal Bruce made with a bad man.

(Oh no.)

And even though she's thousands of miles away from where she started and hundreds of lightyears away from the person she was once, a very long time ago, she stiffens, heart clenching around a gap where her family should be, when she finds out who Bruce's mystery backer is.

(God damn it.)

Who's got exclusive rights to the corpse of every Kaiju that gets taken down.

(Not him.)

Sportsmaster.

(Anyone but him.)

Lawerence Crock.

(Dad.)

She probably shouldn't move him, but since there't no time to waste and there's no time like the present, Artemis hoists L'gann(he doesn't put up a fight) up on her shoulder. They could send him on his own, he can walk. (He can stumble, tripping over his unresonspive feeet and trying to access muscles he doesn't have but a Kaiju does.) He's still buzzed, dosed high on adrenalin and genius, and a splash of the strong stuff, because anything that can steady him is worth trying.

(No one asks her to volunteer, but she's the only around here whose dead weight, so she better make her self useful and quickly.)

Bruce claims that Lawrence will do it, he'll honour what thread of loyalty exclusive rights buy, even if the messenger is vibrating and incoherent. Artemis doesn't have to go. She could stay here, but she knows she can better them a good deal on a good brain.

"I can go too -" Wally starts to offer, maybe because she's only mostly free of the Kaiju blue and because she's walking into a den of theives and he doesn't know that she's walking right back where she belongs, really. If Lawrence has a Kaiju product balck market empire, Artemis is set to inerit, and she'd better start learning the ropes.

"Keep working on _Manhunter_ ," Artemis tells him, she wants as few people as possible to see her like this. "We need you here."

(They don't need her, not really. Not like this.)

Buce lookrelieved that she and L'gann can do this. They need Wally here.

"Keep an eye on Wolf," she asks, because she cant bring Wolf into town while dragging L'gann, barely conherent, around. "Don't let him follow me."

"I won't," Wally promises.

(And besides, she hasn't seen laid eyes on him in almost two decades.)

Bruce hands them a card(off white, boxing at the corners, he's had it for a while) and a blacklight. There's a symbol, enscribed in invisible ink on the card. He tells them as much as he can. It's not much, Artemis knows. It's more than she's heard in a long time though, so she listens carefully. He's made hs fortune on hacking apart and selling the Kaiju, because when it comes to monitary value, the whole is not greater than the sum of its parts. He rose through the ranks out of nowhere, after the governing bodies remembered that they had bigger fish to fry than Kaiju smugglers and profiteers.

(He must've seen her, she's some kind of celebrity.)

Dick waves them off, cheerful, helping Wally hold back Wolf, who is fighting to be at her side, afraid that she won't come back. The town has pushed right up against the side of the Shatterdome, and the buildings have varying degrees of permenancy.

(Where has he been? How did such a small time crook crack the big time?)

L'gann is leaning on her heavily, and she doesn't want him to die in the street before he can suck whatever droplets of information from a Kaiju brain that he can.

(If they have one. They might not.)

They're stumbling through the town, following a treasure trail to Artemis's deadbeat father revealed only by the power of black light to a secret Kaiju product black market headquarters. The town busy and bustling, people pushing past them and tutting, (they look like a pair of drunks, dredging through the streets, loweering the tone of the place) like there hasn't been a Kaiju attack and a major loss to world's last defensiive stronghold in the last few days. People can adapt to anything it seems, even the end of the world.

Artemis in a hurry too, for another reason entirely.

(It's been a long time, and his face is a cruel blur in her memory. He must look differnt now, she looks different now.)

L'gann points her in the right direction, flashing the torch around until it catches somethng, his voice frantic and his tongue slipping on some sounds. It's not as bad as it was earlier. Artemis doesn't know how Bruce (surprising patient with L'gann) was able to decode him, the frantic mumbling and muttering and his eyes darting in every direction and the violent shaking. One of his pupils is blown out.

Artemis wants to offer comfort, to ease his pain, but she doesn't know how. Other people's pain is something she has spent her life inflicting or ignoring, and the habit is hard to break.

(Will he still tower over her, or was that just because she was a child the last time she saw him?)

Artemis is also certain that Dick is following them(she can hear the snatches of laughter on the wind, and the telltale feigned innocent wave off when they left. She only hopes Wally had the good sense to stay behind, because Dick is getting a black eye for his troubles when they get back to base), which is fine, because she needs someone who can watch over L'gann while she has a private chat with Sportsmaster. (With her Dad.)

The glowing ultraviolet sigils led them to the kind of store that should've collapsed under the economic disaster the Kaiju have caused (after a boom that Artemis was so lucky to benefit from - the ports are closed, everything is rationed, luxury is in short supply), the kind of store that sells the very things that once paid Artemis's bills.

(Not that she had very many – being a Jaeger pilot is residential.)

Kaiju and Jaeger Merch.

L'gann whistles, long and low, the Kaiju aficionado that he is can't help but be impressed by the vast collection of mint condition collectibles.

(He can't be too far gone if he can still appreciate a well curated collection.)

Artemis can see herself and Jade looking back at her from a thousand different vantage points. Artemis can't see anyone else, can't find any other familiar faces in the crowds of actions figures and posters and promotional art (propaganda is still propaganda when you're the good guys) staring back up at her, it's just Jade and it's just her, staring back at her full of hope and snark and sass and that brandable attitude and confidence and tragic backstory and classic underdog tale (they were so young, they were children, they were children and the Jaeger Programme took them in and chewed them up and spit out just one broken Drift Incompatible adult and swallowed Jade whole)out of photographs and book covers and this operation's entire cover is a monument to her and Jade, and their success... and to their failure.

Because there he was, the last Kaiju to be a household name, for taking down and retiring the record-breaking pilots of Eden Tempest, standing eye-to-eye with Artemis like he did so long ago when she could pilot a Jaeger and go toe-to-toe with the best and worst of them side by side with Jade.

Hammertail.

He's been rendered in excruciating detail to stand here and overshadow every accomplishment in Artemis and Jade's career and look her in the eye and ask her why couldn't she save Jade-

 _why_ _couldn't she save jade where's jadejadejade gonegonegone littlegirlalonelittlegirlallone why couldn't she save jade jade where's jade where's jade it hurtshurtshurtsburningburning jadewhere's jade jade burning burning jade she hasto fight she has to standbut it hurts so much ithurtsithurtsithurts she has find jade where's jade jadejadejade she's all alone fight punch hit hurt punchhithurt punchhithurt punchhithurt hurthurthurt hurtkillhurtkillhurt burnsburnsburns where's jade jadejadejade littlegirlallalone-_

"Snap out of it Arty, your head's in the clouds again."

He sounds the same.

 _jade could do better not good enough notgoodenoughnotgoodenough useless uselessuselessusless you're worthless worthlessworthlessworthless jadecoulddoitjadecoulddoitjadecoulddoit_

Her head rings distantly with the echoes, but somehow, they seem far away, especially compared to... before. She straightens as much as she can, and looks him in the eye with all the defiance she has learned since she saw him last. He made her, and she owes him something for that.

(Not much, but something.)

"Hey, Dad."

Lawrence Crock.

(Dad.)

* * *

 **I'm going to try churn out another one of these - it took a while to get back into the longfic format, after wrting only short things for so long. I'm not sure I quite managed it.**

 **Please R &R.**


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